Terror's Advocate (2007)

I'll simply start off by saying that Terror's Advocate (L'Avocat de la terreur) isn't so much as fascinating or intriguing as I had heard and read. Quite frankly, I found it a somewhat boring. First and foremost there's next to zero courtroom action involving the litany of despots, tyrants, terrorists, and dictatorial murderers one Jacques Verges, defense attorney to the indefensible.

Whether he insisted on, or was chosen to, represent. this caliber of client is debatable, he began his career like many "freedom fighting" militants, slashing and burning, plotting and sneak attacking, striking when it's convenient for him — all of this culminated in a marriage to an Algerian terrorist (self-described) soon after the country's independence from France. At the time the upwardly mobile, now attorney, settled for clientele consisting of low-rent petty criminals and thugs, but combined with this caliber of clientele, his unsavory courtroom tactics, and the fact he held on to his radical political stances, his services fell out of favor. For a time, that is.

A large part of Barbet Schroeder's documentary revolves around Verges' 10 years of self-imposed exile following the deterioration, as it were, of his client base. Historian, private detective, and journalist testimony assemble a virtual puzzle of Verges' activities during this period of hiding as he was thought to travel frequently between France and Algeria. This turns out to be a less than fascinating, and shallowly explored angle to his story. The interest piques when he begins to plumb the theories revolving around Jacques Verges' stay inside Cambodia and his affiliation with The Khmer Rouge. The documentary plays connect-the-dots with a phalanx of German, Palestinian, French, Algerian, Spanish, and Iranian terrorist bombings, plots, affiliations, and the like, which constituted the violent geopolitical landscape of that time.

Mr. Untouchable (2007)

What Ridley Scott, et al, might have hoped and dreamed for American Gangster, writer/director Marc Levin realizes with his 2007 documentary Mr. Untouchable. What Frank “Superfly” Lucas wished he had been, Leroy “Nicky (The Godfather of Harlem)” Barnes was. A mash of gritty and loathsome street footage and interviews, “Mr. Untouchable” relives, if not somewhat romanticizes, the reign of "Nicky" Barnes (now under the protection of WITSEC) and his “Council (of Seven)” during the New York heroin boom — a boom The Council themselves were largely responsible for and one which they proctored from the nightclubs and posh exurban homes. In a span of just a few years, Barnes rose from common street thug and junkie to the most revered man in black culture — a tenuous post no doubt, as those who held Barnes in the highest regard were the very people he was climbing over as he ascended to the top of the New York drug trade.

Ironically, Barnes would once again play the junkie thug, with the added bonus of being a snitch, when the heat bore down on his enterprise. In terms of the ‘American Gangster’ compare/contrast, this documentary illuminates, with sober precision, the very facts which ‘American Gangster’ writer Steve Zaillian (and whatever researchers he may or may not have employed) chose to co-opt for his film; something which became very clear after its release. Yet I don’t want to make this a hit-piece.

Set to a grinning retro best-beat soundtrack including several clever and original tracks, Mr. Untouchable is a largely even-keeled exploration of a group of friends who revolutionized the drug trade on the east coast of the United States, became veritable kings in the process, then were “shitted on” by Barnes (now known in certain circles as "Snitchy" Barnes) when his back was against the wall. This group included Barnes' own wife, Thelma Grant. While Barnes remains unapologetic on every level, his words do sometimes take on a more somber tone when he talks about what he did to families and individuals alike by making an unending quantity of drugs available, yet in true gangster fashion he always winds up shrugging it off and simply business. Keep it real.