Terror's Advocate.

For the AO Scott, Terror's Advocate "is one of the most engaging, morally unsettling political thrillers in quite some time, with the extra advantage of being true."

Also in the New York Times, Alan Riding meets the documentary's subject, Jacques Vergès: "'I felt that if the film is about me, I will appear in a good part of it,' he said, a smile playing on his lips. 'People will see that I don't have two horns, a tail and forked tongue. What I say will be of my choosing. I will be judged by what I say, either to criticize me or agree with me, but not through rumors and mysteries. So I accepted. And, the film being as it is, I think I was right.'... Still, one of the strengths of Terror's Advocate, which won plaudits at the Cannes Film Festival in May and was well received in France this summer, is that it goes beyond Mr Vergès to offer a fascinating account of terrorism as a political weapon since Algeria began its fight for independence from France in the 1950s."

"Imagine the notorious lawyer at the center of a vast and intricate set of lines connecting Algerian freedom fighters to the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine to Pol Pot to Germany's Red Army Faction to Carlos 'The Jackal,' and you'll have some idea of the ambitious, yet confused diagram that is Barbet Schroeder's latest documentary," writes Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE.

"Terror's Advocate is well-paced, and has the kind of professional sheen - right down to a dramatic soundtrack - that a veteran like Schroeder knows how to provide," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "There's scarcely a necessary interview that Schroeder doesn't get, and he cuts them together with file footage and newspaper headlines to make the whole movie play like an interactive magazine article. But what's missing is any kind of definitive judgment on what Vergès has done and why."

But for Kenneth Turan, "It is the gift of Terror's Advocate... to simply present Vergès as is, to say 'here is the man' and let things speak for themselves. Do they ever." Also in the Los Angeles Times, David Ehrenstein has a good long talk with Schroeder.

"The very title of Terror's Advocate gestures toward contemporary political relevance, but it's likely to have a bigger impact on European spectators than Americans," writes Steve Erickson at Gay City News. "The American political spectrum has shifted so far to the right that a cautionary tale about the dangers of radical chic doesn't mean as much here."

Earlier: David D'Arcy's talk with Schroeder.

Posted by dwhudson at October 14, 2007 8:05 AM