In 1963, the Organisation De L'Armée Secrète, a right-wing French terrorist group, hire a mysterious hit-man codenamed The Jackal to assassinate President Charles DeGaulle. Can he pull off this remarkable crime, or will Police Inspector Claude Lebel find him first ?
Based on the bestselling 1971 novel by Frederic Forsyth, this is an exciting European thriller with great locations (Bloomsbury in London, Genoa, Montparnasse in Paris), a gripping storyline throughout and an unusual premise; we know DeGaulle wasn't killed, so we know the ending to the picture. How then does it hold our interest - it becomes the story of how close The Jackal comes to succeeding, and, much more significantly, the story of his methodology. We see him meeting his contacts, preparing his fake identities, smuggling his weapon across the border, constructing disguises, avoiding detection. He plans everything carefully, but also improvises and adjusts his schemes as and when required. He is truly a phantom, and as such this film is the blueprint for many good hit-man thrillers which came later (In The Line of Fire, Léon, Grosse Pointe Blanke). I must confess I don't usually like Fox, but here he is pretty good, mostly because he has very little to say and the movie is so matter-of-fact. He is well matched by Lonsdale as Lebel, the steady, commensurate professional detective, and the cast has some interesting supporting players like Cusack (the genteel gunsmith) and Pickup (the ill-fated forger). With good photography by Jean Tournier and first-rate editing by Ralph Kemplen (who won an Academy Award), this is a well put-together thriller by old pro Zinnemann, and the touchstone assassin character study movie. Followed by a sort of sequel, The Jackal in 1997. Trivia - if you like Citroen DS cars there are a lot of them in this movie.
Based on the bestselling 1971 novel by Frederic Forsyth, this is an exciting European thriller with great locations (Bloomsbury in London, Genoa, Montparnasse in Paris), a gripping storyline throughout and an unusual premise; we know DeGaulle wasn't killed, so we know the ending to the picture. How then does it hold our interest - it becomes the story of how close The Jackal comes to succeeding, and, much more significantly, the story of his methodology. We see him meeting his contacts, preparing his fake identities, smuggling his weapon across the border, constructing disguises, avoiding detection. He plans everything carefully, but also improvises and adjusts his schemes as and when required. He is truly a phantom, and as such this film is the blueprint for many good hit-man thrillers which came later (In The Line of Fire, Léon, Grosse Pointe Blanke). I must confess I don't usually like Fox, but here he is pretty good, mostly because he has very little to say and the movie is so matter-of-fact. He is well matched by Lonsdale as Lebel, the steady, commensurate professional detective, and the cast has some interesting supporting players like Cusack (the genteel gunsmith) and Pickup (the ill-fated forger). With good photography by Jean Tournier and first-rate editing by Ralph Kemplen (who won an Academy Award), this is a well put-together thriller by old pro Zinnemann, and the touchstone assassin character study movie. Followed by a sort of sequel, The Jackal in 1997. Trivia - if you like Citroen DS cars there are a lot of them in this movie.