User reviews

Decent spy thriller / chase movie from Rene Cardona Jr. Lots of foot chases, car chases, a minor shootout or two, and a couple bomb blasts and there you have it. Garcia does a good job playing the beefy hero who happens to be a former assassin for the PLO. Wanting to quit the life of violence after a massacre in Cairo, he flees with his wife and child to Mexico. However, his former employers want to kill him, so he has to get some info to the CIA (and kill a few enemies) in order to bring him and his family to safety.

As far as Cardona Jr. movies go, this one seems to have an even lower budget than usual. Primitively shot on poor-grade film stock, routinely edited, and at a rather casual pace, there's not much for those besides hard-core fans of Mexican / Euro schlock from the 70's and 80's. However, there is some novelty in how little dialog the film has - as in None. The usual wooden Garcia has to bring Carlos to life purely with movement and facial expressions, which works surprisingly well in a few scenes (such as when he's wounded and hiding in some random guy's apartment - and has to dig a bullet out of his leg without anyone realizing he's there).

The ending is rather strange, but at the same time reflects a lack of creativity on the part of the filmmakers. Cardona Jr.'s son has a small role as an assassin and there's a woman who looks like Faye Dunnaway and a guy who looks like Ernest Borgnine as CIA agents following Garcia, but not much star-power beyond that. Not even a cameo by Hugo Stiglitz. This must have been a quickly-made cheapy Cardona Jr. turned out "just for fun" between two bigger films.

"Carlos the Terrorist" is a failed cinematic experiment. The experiment being the utter lack of dialogue. In its place, we get an information dump at the beginning via off-screen narration, a couple of internal monologues, and a gratingly loud score. It's a bad trade-off. There is not a single exciting action scene in this movie, though at least in the first 70 minutes there is some activity (it could be retitled "Run Carlos Run"); the last 20 minutes are just laughably padded. Andrés García does look great shirtless, though - there is an extended sequence in the middle where he is disarming a bomb (or something like that) and he is only in his bathing trunks for no apparent reason except to show us his hot bod. And it is definitely hot - but the movie is cold. * out of 4.

I did actually have my doubts, having seen only some short clips from this film before. However, all those feelings went away after 10 minutes had elapsed. Splendid acting and wonderful environments mixed with car chases and special effects out of this world! I really love this movie (have seen it about 10 times now) and recommend every action lover out there to get their own copy!

10/10 easily!