Eye Candy #144 - "Terror Advocate"

Terror’s Advocate: Directed by Barbet Schroeder, this documentary gives insight into the life of one Jacques Verges, socialist lawyer to the extreme Left stars and his law career from the 1950's through 1990's. He has represented everyone from Nazi war criminals to assorted African dictators to terrorists, whether it be Algerian, European, or Middle Eastern, and whether you believe the stories or not, chummed around with the likes of Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung. Now in his late 70's-early 80's, he reflects back on his life, the causes he became involved with from the sensational to the trivial, focusing mostly on his work with the Algerian independence movement (and subsequent war), the Palestinians and Carlos the Jackal, far-left European homegrown terror groups like the Red Army Faction, and his defense of Nazi Klaus Barbie. When you get the laundry list of his less-than-savory clients at the end of the film, a LOT was left out, including his representation of Slobodan Milosevic, amongst others. He's arrogant, full of himself, and functions on his own moral plane, but you can plainly see his eloquence and intelligence. But he was also a lawyer that got too close to(and in bed with some of) his clients, and that it was his own politics that drove him to choose the clients that he did (or those that chose him). It's disappointing to see how poorly many of the "revolutionairies" have aged - Carlos the Jackal looks hardly intimidating. The members of the Red Army Faction look old, sad, and worn-out (those that actually made it out of the 1970's alive, that is). He defended people who, if you removed their politics, would obviously have nothing to fall back on. On a brighter note, he even said he would defend Bush, provided he plead guilty first. Woodchuck sez, "Interesting snapshot of the times."