Barbet Schroeder's ‘Terror's Advocate’ tells a story of enigmatic French lawyer Jacques Verges who rose to fame by defending the cases of political terrorists including Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Magdalena Kopp, Roger Garaudy, and Klaus Barbie, to name a few. For more than a half-century, he has known or litigated on behalf of the world's most controversial figures. The film is a kind of documentary about a man who's despised by many, and whose life has interfaced in personal and professional ways with dictators, despots, and serial killers of the first kind. Schroeder has made several significant non-fictional works about other human monsters such as Idi Amin, Claus Von Bulow, and Charles Bukowski. All of these docus, including the new one, could be grouped under the category of ‘Devil's Advocates’.
Without the cooperation of Verges (now around 82), who consented to being interviewed, ‘Terror's Advocate’ would have been a bald documentary. Strong on facts, interview footage, and some speculations, ‘Terror's Advocate’ is an old-fashioned work in the sense that it mostly consists of talking heads. But what comes out of these mouths and heads is always fascinating and intriguing. Rather cleverly, most of the material is presented directly, with no narration or title cards, which increases our involvement in the person's saga.What remains unexplained is Verges' level of commitment on the one hand and the level of mercenary motives on the other.Also problematic is the lack of a broader context, since the background offers nothing less than an informal history of global terrorism. .As with most docus, overall impact of ‘Terror's Advocate’ depends on what's included and excluded, on those interviewed as well as those that are not, on the selection and omission of particular footage.Even so, Schroeder has made an intelligent and provocative, even if it's not complete, portrait of an interesting figure.
