The Day of the Jackal (film)

From AwardAnnals

Reviews

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With its high-intensity plot about an attempt to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle, the bestselling novel by Frederick Forsyth was a prime candidate for screen adaptation. Director Fred Zinnemann brought his veteran skills to bear on what has become a timeless classic of screen suspense. Not to be confused with the later remake The Jackal starring Bruce Willis (which shamelessly embraced all the bombast that Zinnemann so wisely avoided), this 1973 thriller opts for lethal elegance and low-key tenacity in the form of the Jackal, the suave assassin played with consummate British coolness by Edward Fox. He’s a killer of the highest order, a master of disguise and international elusiveness, and this riveting film follows his path to de Gaulle with an intense, straightforward documentary style. Perhaps one of the last great films from a bygone age of pure, down-to-basics suspense (and a kind of debonair European alternative to the American grittiness of The French Connection), The Day of the Jackal is a cat-and-mouse thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat until its brilliantly executed final scene (pardon the pun), by which time Fox has achieved cinematic immortality as one of the screen’s most memorable killers. —Jeff Shannon

Related works

The Jackal: Music from and Inspired By

Various Artists

The Richard Gere/Bruce Willis bomb was destined for a quick exit from the big screen, which is too bad since this is an exemplary sampler of up-to-the-minute electronica. Norman Cook (ex-Housemartins/Beats International) reemerges here as Fatboy Slim, neatly sampling The Who’s “I Can’t Explain” for lead track “Going Out of My Head.” And tracks by Prodigy, Bush, Moby, Lunatic Calm, and Black Grape’s pro-pot anthem “Get Higher” (which craftily subverts a comment by Ronald Reagan) keep the pace jumping. —Jeff Bateman

The Day of the Jackal

Frederick Forsyth

• 1972 Edgar–Novel winner
• Score: 10.22

The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with  opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his  profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the  world. An assassin with a contract to kill the  world’s most heavily guarded man.

One  man with a rifle who can change the course of  history. One man whose mission is so secretive not  even his employers know his name. And as the  minutes count down to the final act of execution, it  seems that there is no power on earth that can stop  the Jackal.

The Jackal

Michael Caton-Jones

The best way to enjoy this 1997 thriller is to forget the much better film that inspired it (1973’s The Day of the Jackal) and get whatever kicks you can from this heavy-metal remake. It’s not bad as hokey thrillers go, but all of the original film’s suspenseful finesse has been traded in (not traded up) for bigger, bolder action and nonsensical plotting. It’s as if Hollywood had forgotten to create excitement without resorting to overblown action and heavy hardware, but there’s ample compensation in the casting of Bruce Willis and Richard Gere. Willis is…