The Assignment

A spy film set across several countries. There is a terrorist called Carlos. He has been operating in Europe since the seventies and has never been caught. An American agent has been after him for years. Jack Shaw let him slip during a raid and lost most of his team that day. Years later word comes. A man is seen in a market in Jerusalem. His face resembles Carlos. The man is arrested and beaten. Then it becomes clear: this is someone else. Annibal Ramirez is an officer in the American navy. He lives with his wife and two children and has nothing to do with any of it. Jack Shaw finds him. He makes an offer. From there the film is a story of training. The man will be turned into Carlos. Walk, speech, language, habits and tics. An Israeli agent is in the training too. Amos runs the method hard. His relations with women are studied. All his lovers are known and each is a separate lesson. Ramirez does not want this. Then he begins to want it. What the narrative is interested in is not espionage but transformation: its idea is that in learning the part the man loses his own life, and that his wife can no longer recognise him. The plan is this: Ramirez will act as Carlos and the Soviets will believe he is working for two sides. His own side will then remove him. From there the narrative takes place in Europe. Vienna, East Berlin, Libya. At every step both sides are watching him. At the end two men come face to face. Aidan Quinn plays both parts. The events rest on a real person. Carlos existed and was caught in 1994; the operation in the film is invented. It was shot mostly in Canada. Christian Duguay directed. Aidan Quinn, Donald Sutherland, Ben Kingsley and Claudia Ferri are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1990s spy thrillers and narratives about identity. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism; the logic of the operation is weak and the last section falls into the genre's shape.