The Day of the Jackal (1973)

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.

These days, it's fascinating to see Edward Fox playing crusty old gents in episodes of "Midsummer Murders" or "Agatha Christie's Miss Marple" when you know that back in the day, he was a super-fit assassin who could kill with one blow from the back of his hand.In fact he was just about the best hit man ever in just about the best thriller ever. Although "The Day of the Jackal" was made in 1973, with not one smartphone or desktop computer in sight, it is still the police procedural par excellence.I love all the detail as Edward Fox's methodical Jackal plans to assassinate Charles De Gaulle, and how Michael Londsale's equally methodical French policeman, Claude Label, plans to stop him.When I first saw the movie in 1973, many of the British actors such as Maurice Denham, Derek Jacobi and Cyril Cusack etc., were familiar, but over the intervening years, they became almost like old friends, turning up in countless movies and television shows.The French actors and extras were perfectly cast, from the tough-looking characters playing OAS and Action Service men to the Citroën chauffeured members of parliament, and the beautiful widow who uses her charms to get information about the government's plans.A few years ago, I lent the DVD to a friend who watched it with his teenage son. When I asked what they thought of it, he told me his son thought it lacked action - I think he felt the same. That attitude goes some way to explaining why over the decades; the ratio of action-heavy movies to films of depth has risen exponentially.The more you see of Fred Zinneman's movies the more you appreciate how good he was; a perfectionist. Where it could be argued that the movies of many of his famous contemporaries went off as they aged - Ford, Huston, Preminger - his movies never did. Even his last one "Five Days One Summer" is a beautifully understated and underrated cult classic.However there is little doubt about "The Day of the Jackal" - it's a lesson in how to put a film together.

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.

In thrillers' orthodoxy, the effectiveness of suspense relies on the outcome's unpredictability. If the main character is a killer, there has to be chances for his success, and any slight intuition that he might not accomplish his mission would severely undermine the film's value as a thriller.However, there is no rule without exceptions, and on that level, "The Day of the Jackal", released by Fred Zimmerman in 1973, is a fantastic school-case proving that thrills can be efficiently driven regardless of what they're leading up to. The film, adapted from Frederick Forsyth's best-seller, centers on a professional killer, Edward Fox as 'the Jackal' assigned by the underground army group OAS to assassinate General De Gaulle, on anger for his granting the independence to Algeria, thus betraying his vows to the French Army.And there are reasons why the 'Jackal' demands half-a million dollars for his services besides danger and De Gaulle's difficulty to be 'approached': he's giving them France on a silver plate, he'll never be able to work again and they can use their networks to rob banks and jewelries … not to mention he has to make sure he can escape after the killing. Naturally, all these precautions hardly matter on the long term, we know De Gaulle will live, but it's less in the killing than the way its planning is masterfully and meticulously constructed, Zimmerman displays indeed a level of craftsmanship matching the Jackal's professionalism.'Professionalism" is a key word enhancing "The Day of the Jackal"'s cinematic greatness. The film chronicles with a documentary-like realism all the steps, every single move anticipating the assassination. To obtain a passport, he uses the birth certificate of an Englishman who'd be his age if he didn't die at 2, he then moves to Genoa to order false passports from a forger and a lightweight rifle with telescopic sight and a silencer from a gunsmith. Meanwhile, he spots the apartment in Paris with the best view on Place du 18 Juin 1940, duplicates the key to the upper flat, and steals a passport in London's airport from a Danish tourist.To spice up the plot, the French Secret Services spot the location where the OAS members exiled and their investigation concludes on another plot against the President. They have clues that a fair-haired Englishman visited the place but nothing else. The way their services collaborate with other foreign agencies, mainly Scotland Yard, use registration cards from hotels prove the Jackals's precautions right, he rightfully expected that the cover to be blown (not without the use of torture) … but the thrills come from the whole cat-and-mouse game between European police bureaucracies and one man who single-handedly challenges them all.That's one of the greatest delights provided by "The Day of the Jackal", and Fox' performance is crucial here. He appears like a highly-educated upper-class Englishman who can easily go unnoticed in a summertime France full of tourists, we eagerly follow him in his tour all over Europe (the escapism of "The Day of the Jackal" is another strength worth mentioning) and even when he's told about the French police's progresses (a spy was hired to become the mistress of a French minister), he manages to slip through the net, using his boyish charm to seduce a bourgeois woman or a Danish disguise to seduce a Parisian in a Turkish bathhouse.On the other side, professionalism is also working, and Inspector Raymond Lebel (Michael Lonsdale) is given full power to track and find the 'Jackal' In total secrecy according to De Gaulle's orders, De Gaulle wouldn't change his schedule, let alone the August 25 celebration of the Resistance Day, coincidentally the likeliest time for the assassination. Zimmerman swings back and forth from the Jackal to the Police, from the borders to the hotels, with an advantage in time, the Jackal intelligently exploits. Luck or hazard are never parameters, it's essentially the courage and the nerve of a no-nonsense man who trusts his professionalism.Back to that professionalism thing, there is an interesting sequence in Genoa, where the Jackal takes the rifle from the gunsmith (Cyril Cusack) : the man proves his reliability by not asking questions and remaining all matter-of-factly over the killing-marvel he created. On the other hand, the forger tries to blackmail the Jackal and gets exactly what was coming to him. The parallel between the two attitudes highlights that no matter how 'malevolent' he is, the Jackal has 'ethics' , there is a way you should deal with him and a way not to. Still, he can kill any by-passer on his deadly path, women and even older ones won't be spared.Indeed, no matter who die, De Gaulle remains the man-not-to-be-killed. "The Jackal" still has an interesting body count. Some murders are cold-blooded and particularly brutal but they provide the required two-dimensionality for leading villain. And by that, I don't mean the man lacks depth, but what to expect from a professional killer who's only dedicated to his last mission? He can't show anything but what is shown is enough, and the contrast between his elegance and ruthlessness, as for the Inspector's average appearance but undeniable competence, two opposite at the top of their game, is enough to thrill us.And as a thriller, "The Day of the Jackal" is a heart-pounding combination of suspense, realism with regular outbursts of violence, it's a two-hour and 15 minutes race against the clock that never seems to long. Granted the outcome predictable, it's not in the 'what will happen' but 'how it will'. The editing answers to the 'how' and is curiously the only Oscar-nominated aspect of the film; frankly I would have nominated it for Best Directing and Best Writing as well, one of the greatest thrillers of the 70's