‘A man like this doesn’t make mistakes…’
This is another one of those times in which it is impossible to ascertain how this film ended up on my watchlist. I know that The Day of the Jackal – the film this is loosely based on – is widely regarded to be a classic, but I’ve never seen it, and neither have I seen the book. And yet, here I am in the year of Lord 2024 watching the 1997 version of The Jackal. This is what my life is now – a series of taut ’90s thrillers that nobody else has seen or talked about for decades…
The titular jackal is a heartless assassin played by Bruce Willis in an assortment of terrible wigs and fake moustaches. He is hired to murder somebody. Someone in the FBI, I think. In response, the Bureau busts out an incarcerated former IRA sniper played by Richard Gere (Yes, you read that correctly – a former IRA sniper played by… Richard Gere) to try and… I dunno, kill the jackal? Merely stop him? It’s never really clear. Or important.
So, I hear you cry, can Richard Gere convincingly play an imprisoned FBI sniper? The answer, dear reader, is an emphatic and unsurprising no. I mean it’s a bad accent to start with, as you can imagine. But it’s everything else. You can tell this man doesn’t drink Guinness just by looking at him. It’s obvious. To be fair, Willis doesn’t do much better playing against type as a villain. It doesn’t matter how many shit wigs you put on him; he’s still Bruce Willis, and any audience worth their salt still wants to root for him. The result of all this miscasting is an uneven and inconsistent film that starts off quite well but tails off badly in the mostly tedious third act. The fact that this was Sidney Poitier’s final film is quite sad, really.
The Jackal had a good run at the box office but was derided by critics and has since been consigned to the cinematic dustbin of history. Which, quite frankly, is exactly where it belongs.
