▶︎
This eight-hour true-crime drama opens with what nowadays might be termed a non-denial denial. Interviewed by a US TV reporter in Paris in 1997, Charles Sobhraj, a French national of Vietnamese and Indian extraction, is questioned about his criminal past. “The question is whether I have committed murder,” he muses – actor Tahar Rahim keeping a serene poker face: “The courts they have decided, no,” is his somewhat evasive assessment. What follows is a vividly mounted, if somewhat partial, fact-based narrative, attempting to uncover the truth of Sobhraj’s nefarious exploits, while drawing a portrait of the seductive persona and skewed psychology behind the carnage.