JohnHowardReid
In The Day of the Jackal (1973) (available on a 10/10 Universal DVD), director Fred Zinnemann made a surprisingly taut thriller, using a brilliantly combined French and British cast, led by Edward Fox, Michel Lonsdale, Alan Badel and Delphine Seyrig. Although the movie runs no less than 143 minutes, the direction and film editing (Ralph Kemplen) are so crisp, there is not a moment that fails to hold suspense. The screenplay by Kenneth Ross (whose writing career in movies is remarkably sparse - Brother Sun Sister Moon, The Odessa File, Black Sunday, and The Fourth War were his only other titles up to 1973) - is a model in the art of storytelling.The superbly lensed location photography by Jean Tournier also adds immeasurably to the overwhelming sense of inexorable reality.
grantss
France, 1963. A group of disgruntled army officers have banded together and formed an organisation called the OAS. Their aim - to kill President Charles de Gaulle. After several failed attempts and the trial and execution of several of their leaders, the OAS hire an assassin in a final attempt to complete the task. He is The Jackal.Superb thriller - a great adaptation of the Frederick Forsyth novel. Very intriguing and engaging. While the coverage of the Jackal himself is interesting, what rounds it off perfectly is the police angle. We see the investigations, on both sides of the English Channel, the ingenious hypotheses and cross-examination of data and the painstaking grunt work.Director Fred Zinneman also builds the tension well and the conclusion is not at all predictable. Add in a decidedly unglamourous lead detective, Commissioner Lebel, and you have a very plausible, gritty, accurate-feeling movie. No flashy stuff, just a great story, well told.
berberian00-276-69085
This Film ranks high in Suspense Movies List. It's too sophisticated to understand by Easy Movie goers. It's shot in France, Italy and England - so, it preserves some charm for this part of Europe for times past and long gone. It is, by the way, pure European thriller with local cast and directed by Austrian Fred Zinnemann (1907–1997) who made score of Films for Hollywood studios. Maybe I won't get credit but it resembles a Hitchcock movie by the intricacy of plot and evolving of drama, narrated in documentary style.The gem of performance is Edward Fox as hired assassin "Jackal". This is anagram for name coming from (Cha)rles (Cal)trop. The Jackal uses forged identity by falsifying birth certificate of dead person (Paul Duggan) and stealing two other passports. He then kills 5-6 people on his way to the Paris Plaza where he misses President De Gaulle by inch and get eliminated by Commissar Lebel (Michael Lonsdale). Two women participate in the Movie - Delphine Seyrig as middle-aged Frenchwoman who is killed after an affair with the Jackal; plus, Olga Georges-Picot as Denise (his link to Algerian terrorists that pay half million dollars for targeting the President). All is based on true story documented by Frederick Forsyth and written as a novel.I proceed to reminiscences of today, which is 40 years from time. Today, my friends, such a Movie is impossible to procure or even protocol. We live in a World where everything is being watched, filmed, listened to, recorded, tracked, entered on databases and put on lists. Targeted are government and private agencies, big business and ordinary fellows, fraudsters and organized crime. The World is daunting array of electronic gear ... This is citation from book on "Total Surveillance", published by Piatkus in 2000 (author is not mentioned for discretion).I ask, subsequently, the following question - should people like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden be perceived as villains for publishing secret American documents. After all, their starting point was ECHELON system for intelligence gathering - based on signal interception by radomes (those giant golf balls on Earth landscape). I recede now ...
Vivekmaru45
Based on the novel of the same name by bestselling novelist Frederick Forsyth, the film is about a professional assassin known only as the "Jackal" who is hired to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle in the summer of 1963.Though the assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle and subsequent capture, trial and execution of Jean Bastien-Thiry a member of the militant French underground organisation OAS really happened, the part about the remaining OAS leaders hiring a contract killer codenamed the Jackal is purely fictitious and never happened in real life. The film spans the period between the time the attempt on Charles de Gaulle's life is made up to the time the Jackal gets his chance to take him out. The excellent administration of Charles de Gaulle manages to discover that a second assassination attempt would be made and immediately set up a task force with detective Claude Lebel (Michael Lonsdale) heading the investigation in the hope that they can catch the Jackal before it it is too late... An excellent cast, script, background sound effects and photography make this film one of the best in its genre.Other films based on Frederick Forsyth novels: The Dogs of War, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol.
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