The Day of the Jackal

1973 "Nameless, faceless... relentlessly moving towards the date with death that would rock the world."
7.8| 2h23m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 15 May 1973 Released
Producted By: Universal Pictures
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated gendarme on the assassin’s trail.

Genre

Action, Thriller

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Director

Fred Zinnemann

Production Companies

Universal Pictures

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The Day of the Jackal Audience Reviews

Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
GamerTab That was an excellent one.
TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Parker Lewis I was very excited to finally watch The Day of the Jackal, especially with the top reviews and Edward Fox in the lead role. I know this will draw many people who disagree, and that's fine, free speech and all, but my review is politically incorrect because I wasn't drawn into the movie.It was hard to find anyone in The Day of the Jackal who spoke with a French accent - it got quite confusing. I mean The French Connection had more people speaking French! Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, especially as I guess in Valkyrie hardly anyone spoke German! At least in Allo Allo, some of the performers had French accents, even if they weren't French.The pacing was sort of okay, but still, it could have been better paced. The ending was rather poignant, especially with the Jackal being buried in an unmarked plot.
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 ...
skeptic skeptical This film, set primarily in early 1960s Paris, offers a close look at a person who spends his life accepting contracts to kill other people in exchange for large wads of cash. The Jackal is a cold, calculating and very intelligent killer determined to succeed in his mission to whack the president of France, Charles de Gaulle. It does not matter much why this supposedly needs to be done. He agrees to kill on behalf of a fringe group of self-styled patriots who are incensed that Algeria has been granted its independence by the president. (As though it were his to confer!) The question how assassinating the president might alter the French renunciation of Algeria as a territory is not really treated in the film, but one surmises from their quasi-religious fervor that the members of the group somehow think that they can spark some sort of political revolution.The gist of this film is a close-up view of the contract killer in action—including the intricacies of his plan and his amoral (or is that immoral?) modus operandi—and the French police and security forces as they attempt to stop him. It's quite a story, with plenty of suspense and twists and turns, but the best part is the realistic and convincing portrayal of the sociopathic Jackal, who will stop at nothing to complete his contract and receive the second half of the huge amount of cash which awaits him. I regard The Day of the Jackal as one the best films on hit men ever made, right up there with Le Samouraï. Highly recommended!
SnoopyStyle It's August 1962. Extremists from the Army called O.A.S. attempt to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle for giving Algeria independence. Six months later, many in the group are arrested and their leader sentenced to death. In desperation, they hire The Jackal (Edward Fox) to kill De Gaulle for $500k. They rob banks for the money. The authorities are trying to discover the scheme.I don't get why the love from everybody for this movie. Even compared to other action thrillers of the era, this is rather mind-numbing. I'm OK with watching the minutia of planning but this is a bit too long with that. I love the European locations. However the action is shot poorly. This is 2 years after 'The French Connection' and feels like a step back. It is a boring thriller.