ASSIGNMENT, THE

SYNOPSIS:
Carlos "The Jackal" Sanchez is the best known terrorist in the world, and for 20 years, the most elusive. Annibal Ramirez (Aidan Quinn), on the other hand, is a fine American naval officer with a family. And he is the spitting image of The Jackal (not to be confused with the film of that name, but dealing with a fictional assassin). The CIA’s Jack Shaw (Donald Sutherland) and his Israeli counterpart, Amos (Ben Kingsley) realise they can use Ramirez to impersonate Carlos and draw the real terrorist out of hiding into a trap. They recruit him despite his reluctance, and for Ramirez, it is a daunting descent into the depths of the human soul, as he becomes Carlos in every movement, every word, every cruel gesture, and even beds the women who can lead the Western world into Carlos’ lair. The process changes him, much to his own and his wife’s despair, but the mission is the most important of his life – and of great value to the freedom and safety of the world.

"You don’t need to have read the book about the terrorist Carlos (To the Ends of the Earth, by David Yallop) to be fascinated by this film, but it certainly adds to the richness of the experience. Written - at an opportune time, with Carlos now in jail - by two men who have first hand experience and knowledge about espionage and the Middle East, the best part of the script is the device - a doppelganger - that gives us an outsider’s point of view of this always fascinating and frightening world. So, on the one hand, we are witness to a huge, globally important fact-based story whose denoument is still a subject of current affairs; and on the other, we are given a first class thriller that sets itself apart by its intelligence and depth (I don’t agree with Brendan Kelly, below, who calls it flat). There is plenty of action and plenty of substance, both political and psychological, as well as very high stakes; what’s more, it’s all for real. Then, as a character study of a sturdy naval officer and family man turning himself into the double of a terrorist without morals, it is a tribute to all involved, but especially Aidan Quinn and his Canadian director, Christian Duguay. The accomplished script is matched by accomplished visuals, hardly surprising since Duguay is himself a cinematographer. (This is his second film, after Screamers.) For lovers of cinema, the long but seamless opening shot alone is worth the price of admission, beginning with a Paris street puddle being filled by two little boys peeing, and ending up inside a bedroom above the street, for a dramatic scene. Not only does the shot itself take your breath away, it embraces the very contrariness of life: the playfulness adjacent to the drama of it. This is excellent cinema."
Andrew L. Urban