assignment film 1997

The Assignment

“The Assignment” is a canny, tricky thriller that could serve as an illustration of what this week’s similar release, “The Peacemaker,” is not. Both films involve an international hunt for a dangerous terrorist, but “The Peacemaker” is a cartoon and “The Assignment” is intelligent and gripping–and it has a third act! Instead of an action orgy, it has more than enough story to see it through to the end and keep us absorbed the whole way. Yes, it ends with a deadly struggle, but as the setting for another stage of the movie’s web of deceit.

The film is centered on a CIA plot to discredit and kill Carlos, the feared terrorist who operated for years, despite the best efforts of the free world’s security agencies to capture him. Donald Sutherland plays Fields, the CIA agent for whom Carlos has become an obsession, and when he finds a U.S. Navy officer named Ramirez ( Aidan Quinn ) who’s a dead-ringer for the terrorist, he devises a risky scheme: He’ll train Ramirez to impersonate Carlos, then use the double to convince the KGB that their attack dog is disloyal. As a result, Carlos will either be dead or, almost as good, discredited in the eyes of his sponsors.

Fields works with an Israeli named Amos ( Ben Kingsley ) in training Ramirez, after first using psychological tactics to persuade the reluctant Navy man to leave his wife and family and become a counter-terrorist. (The scene where Fields shows Ramirez a dying child in a hospital is a direct echo of “ The Third Man “.) Then the false Carlos, is sent into the field to work the deception, which I will not describe.

“The Assignment” is fascinating because its characters can be believed, because there is at least a tiny nugget of truth in the story, and because from the deceptive opening credits, this is a film that creates the right world for these characters to inhabit. Sutherland’s CIA man is especially well drawn: “I don’t have any family,” he says, “and I don’t have any friends. The only people I’ve ever cared about were the ones I’ve killed.” Quinn plays a dual role, as Ramirez and Carlos, and has some tricky scenes, especially one in which a former lover of Carlos helps train him sexually so that he will be a convincing bedmate for another of the terrorist’s lovers.

The screenplay, by Dan Gordon and Sabi H. Shabtai , has action scenes that grow from the story and are not simply set pieces for their own sake. It’s impressive the way so many different story threads come together all at once near the end.

The director, Christian Duguay , is new to me. What he has is a tactile love of film, of images. He and the cinematographer, David Franco, don’t use locations so much as occupy them; we visit Jerusalem, Paris, Vienna, Washington, Tripoli and Moscow (or sets and effects that look like them) and yet the movie’s not a travelogue but a story hurtling ahead.

I have seen so many lazy thrillers. They share the same characteristics: Most of the scenes involve the overpriced star, the villain is underwritten, and the plot is merely a set-up for the special effects, the chases and the final action climax. “The Assignment” gives us ensemble work by fine actors, it has a villain of great complexity (developed through the process of imitating him), and at the end there is a tantalizing situation for us to unravel as we leave the theater.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Claudia Ferri as Maura Ramirez
Aidan Quinn as Annibal Ramirez/Carlos
Ben Kingsley as Amos
Celine Bonnier as Carla

Directed by

Christian Duguay
Sabi H. Shabtai

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The Assignment

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Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Christian Duguay

Aidan Quinn

Lt. Cmdr. Annibal Ramirez

Donald Sutherland

Ben Kingsley

Claudia Ferri

Maura Ramirez

Céline Bonnier

The Assignment

An American naval officer is recruited for an operation to eliminate his lookalike, the infamous terrorist Carlos The Jackal.
1986. In his civilian clothes while on shore leave in Jerusalem, Lieutenant Commander Annibal Ramirez of the US Navy is captured and interrogated by who he eventually learns is Mossad in a case of mistaken identity. Because of the resemblance, they believed him to be Carlos the Jackal, one of if not the most wanted and dangerous terrorist in the world. Shortly following, Henry Fields, using the alias Jack Shaw, he the Paris deputy chief of CIA counter-terrorism whose primary mission for at least the past ten years has been to get rid of Carlos in any way possible, tries to recruit Ramirez to work on a covert CIA-Mossad operation to stop Carlos' terrorist activities with the ultimate goal of Carlos' capture or death. The plan is for Ramirez to impersonate Carlos, in the process discrediting Carlos in the eyes of his current KGB backers, and thus effectively ending his career as a terrorist, with nowhere he can longer hide. After an initial reluctance on Ramirez's part, Shaw is able to convince him to do the job. The rigorous training is to ensure that Ramirez not only looks like Carlos, but instinctively behaves like Carlos, even to those closest to him, which also means how he makes love as one of Ramirez's interactions is to be with one of Carlos' old girlfriends. Beyond the potential problem of getting caught by Carlos or his associates, Ramirez may have problems stomaching his work and reconciling it with his real life as a military man. If he is able to carry out the mission and survive, the bigger question becomes whether being Carlos will have transformed his inherent being permanently. — Huggo
An American naval officer is recruited by the government to impersonate the most vicious and cold-blooded terrorist there is in order to catch him. But are things really what they seem to be? — Steve Richer <[email protected]>
The film opens to the sounds of a couple having sex. Afterwards, Carlos the Jackal (Aidan Quinn) kills a spider in its web with his cigarette and evicts the woman(Lucie Laurier) from his room because he claims he has work to do. He is seen donning a disguise, and he walks to a cafe where CIA agent Jack Shaw (Donald Sutherland) is sitting at a table outdoors. He recognizes Shaw and asks for a light. Shaw does not recognize Carlos, because of his disguise, but he turns to watch Carlos enter the cafe. He watches as Carlos detonates a grenade, killing dozens of people. The film shows an event of attacking the OPEC meeting by the Jackal and his fellows in 1975. In the present day, Carlos is apprehended in an open air market and brutally interrogated by a Mossad commander named Amos (Ben Kingsley). Carlos claims to actually be a US Naval officer named Annibal Ramirez whose identification was lost in the chaos of his arrest. Amos confirms his identity and lets him go, stunned that Ramirez looks exactly like Carlos. Back at home, Ramirez is visited by Shaw who tries to recruit him to play Carlos' double. Ramirez is so embittered by his rough treatment in Amos' hands, that he insists he will sue and flatly rejects the idea of portraying Carlos. Shaw persists, wooing Ramirez on several occasions. He finally convinces Ramirez by showing him a child in a hospital who he claims is a victim of one of Carlos' bombings. Amos and Shaw train Ramirez at a remote location. Much of his training is devoted to situational awareness and internalizing details of Carlos' life. His training concludes with one of Carlos' ex-mistresses training Ramirez in how to make love like Carlos. The plan to catch Carlos revolves around convincing the KGB, which supports much of his terrorism, that he has begun to work with the CIA. The team lures one of Carlos' girlfriends to Libya, where Ramirez meets up with her, successfully posing as Carlos, even during their lovemaking. The girlfriend has become an informant for the French, however. Several French agents arrive at their apartment, and Ramirez is forced to kill them to survive. He is horrified at having to kill allies in his undercover operation. Carlos sends an assassin to kill the girlfriend in France, ordering him to leave Europe through London. The assassin happens to be in Heathrow airport at the same time as Ramirez, and he quickly realizes he is an impostor after Ramirez doesn't recognize him. The assassin forces Ramirez into a bathroom and a struggle ensues. Amos rushes in and manages to kill the assassin before being fatally shot. After Amos' death, the CIA shuts down the mission and Ramirez returns home. Back with his wife, he makes love to her as Carlos would, and she is disturbed by the change in his personality. The next day, at his son's little league game, he gets into a confrontation with another father and nearly kills him. Shaw bails him out of jail, and both men are clearly suffering deeply by not being able to finish their mission and kill Carlos. They head to East Berlin and conspicuously meet with each other. The KGB sees Ramirez meeting with Shaw and assumes Carlos has turned on them. They raid his hotel, but as they try to arrest them, he escapes. Shaw and Ramirez are waiting outside the hotel for him, and Ramirez fights Carlos on the bank of a river. It's impossible to tell which is the real Carlos during the struggle. As one of the men is being held under water by the other, Shaw comes upon them and shoots the man above the water several times. He realizes that he has shot Ramirez, and Carlos swims away. Ramirez presses Shaw to leave him and chase Carlos, but Shaw insists that their plan has worked and Carlos is a marked man by the KGB. One way or another, Shaw points out that Carlos' days as a terrorist are over. The deaths of Ramirez and his family are staged by Shaw, and in the final scene, the family are safely cavorting on a beach. Ramirez moves to kill a spider in its web with his cigarette, but appears to change his mind.