The Assignment is a 1997 spy thriller film directed by Christian Duguay and starring Aidan Quinn in two roles, Donald Sutherland, and Ben Kingsley. The film, written by Dan Gordon and Sabi H. Shabtai, is set mostly in the late 1980s and deals with a CIA plan to use Quinn's character to masquerade as the terrorist Carlos the Jackal.
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 officer 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 followers in 1975.
In the present day a man, looking like Carlos, is apprehended in an open air market and brutally interrogated by a Mossad commander named Amos (Ben Kingsley). The man claims to actually be a US
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