Acclaimed French TV miniseries turned lauded big-screen biopic, Carlos (aka 'The Jackal'*) charts the journey of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez from Venezuelan whippersnapper to Marxist-Leninist poster-boy and career terrorist.

In this clip - like much of the film, painstakingly recreated from eyewitness accounts by director Olivier Assayas and his co-writer Dan Franck - Carlos and his small band of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine guerillas bursts into the 1975 OPEC leaders' meeting and taken the whole delegation hostage.

The PFLP may sound vaguely Python-esque but the terrorist cell meant business, car-bombing its way around Europe in the hope of winning concessions for the Palestinian cause. But was it really the driving force behind the OPEC attack or did Carlos sell out to Saddam or Gaddafi?



Frankly, we're not sure. We do know, though, that while the charismatic Carlos (Edgar Ramirez) has all the trappings of proper '70s iconhood - the Guevara beret, the Marenghi shades, the louche bearing - but he's definitely more Mesrine than Che, a man with a healthy self-regard, and self-interest, to go with the violent dogma.

Cut down from its five+ hours TV runtime to a more cinema-friendly 165 minutes, Carlos gets its cinema release on October 22.
 

* Carlos was actually dubbed The Jackal by The Guardian after his death when a copy of Frederick Forsyth's novel The Day Of The Jackal was found among his effects. Which is a shame because it's a properly cool nickname.