'Jackal' a lame imitation of '73 thriller

November 19, 1997
Web posted at: 4:54 p.m. EST (2154 GMT)

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- In 1973's "The Day of the Jackal," which obliquely "inspired" the new Richard Gere/Bruce Willis film "The Jackal," a fancy assassin is out to kill French President Charles De Gaulle.

With no room for error, the killer has an especially high-powered rifle built for the job. In one memorable scene, he tests the weapon's capabilities by hanging a pumpkin from a distant tree, lifting the rifle to his shoulder and firing. The pumpkin, which represents De Gaulle's head, explodes into a mass of pulp and chunks.

I probably haven't seen the movie since I was 10 years old, but that one image is chilling and has stuck with me. The methodical quality the assassin brings to his experiment speaks volumes about the kind of trouble De Gaulle is in.

Now for the 1997 version.

Willis, as the assassin code-named "The Jackal," spends the first 30 minutes of the movie tracking down all the specialized materials needed to build his own uber-gun.

After convincing a techno-geek to construct the proper rare-metal-alloy tripod, Willis mounts a 10- or 15 foot-long armor-piercing cannon on top of it. The cannon must be aimed via computer and a small TV screen. Eventually, he pushes the big red button that fires the howitzer at that distant pumpkin, but he misses. Instead, the 6-inch-long bullet plows into a tree, snapping it in half. When it falls, it knocks over the pumpkin.

This is all you have to know about what's wrong with modern American movie-making.

Freud would have a field day considering the alarming length of Willis' "gun." Movie guns, like the stages at Rolling Stones concerts, keep getting bigger and bigger as the product gets less inspired, but I'll stick with the more easily graspable idea of movie subtlety.

Nowadays, a scene is considered emotionally muted if the actor doesn't say much while shooting off a missile launcher that could blow a hole in the middle of the Empire State Building. If the guy isn't screaming out obscenities or the disco soundtrack isn't blaring at top volume while he does it, the moment is filed under "subdued."

Gere a disappointment -- again

There are lots of other things to bug you in Michael Caton-Jones' "The Jackal." Willis' techno-gadget obsession is only the most obvious. Actually, it's not fair to so prominently feature Willis in this complaint, because he gives a pretty good performance as the villain who's out to kill a U.S. government bigwig. Evidently, De Gaulle, having ruled 28 years ago, is 27.5 years beyond the memory of most Americans.

The Jackal is one of those smarty-pants types who avoids the authorities by wearing an elaborate new disguise every time he leaves the house. At various times during the film, he strolls through international airports dressed as everything but H.R. Pufnstuf. Considering his past history as an action hero, Willis is surprisingly good at cold-blooded, cold-hearted killing. He enjoys being mean without making a big to-do about it, and it's fun to watch.

Then, of course, there's Richard Gere.

Clips from "The Jackal"
	Partial trailer: 845K/22 sec. QuickTime Movie
	Full trailer: 1 min., 44 sec. VXtreme streaming video

Regardless of what some people think, I don't enjoy being mean. I honestly hope every time I walk into a movie theater that an actor I've previously not cared for is going to surprise me -- that he or she will give a performance that makes me rethink my feelings about them. It happened recently, to a slight degree, with Jennifer Jason Leigh. She usually has me hanging from the wall by my fingernails, but I thought she was pretty darn good in "Washington Square." Unfortunately, this has not happened with Gere.

I just finish watching "Red Corner," and here he is again. Gere plays a jailed Irish terrorist, the only man alive who can understand the finely tuned mind of Willis. (Movies require a suspension of disbelief) "The Jackal" has only been seen face-to-face by a few people, and Gere is one of them. The U.S. government, led by Sidney Poitier, who oozes stern dignity, as usual) gets Gere released from prison so he can help them track Willis down.

Gere, who speaks with a brogue that makes him sound like he's about to sell the FBI a truckload of Irish Spring, explains that, years earlier, Willis shot Gere's pregnant girlfriend (Mathilda May), killing the child. I've pointed this little screenwriter's device out before, but, as anyone who's ever seen a movie knows, this makes it personal. That means that Gere will be just as obsessed as the feds are with capturing that mean, old, baby-killin', disguise-wearin', great-big-gun-totin' Jackal!

Boring, boring, boring

Or so you would think. The biggest problem with the storytelling is that there's zero sense of urgency over what's going on.

Gere sits around with Poitier's team of terrorism experts so many times, you start to wonder if they have enough coffee to jump-start themselves in the morning.

The movie keeps zipping them around the globe to exotic locales (suddenly it says "Helsinki" at the bottom of the screen) as they pursue Willis, but it seems more like they're "functioning right behind him" rather than the far more cinematic concept of "chasing him."

Caton-Jones' insistence on using boring lap-dissolves to move between every new location in the story looks uninspired at first, but then starts to grate like crazy after you've seen the 200th one. One or two hard cuts might have helped build a little tension, anyway.

They finally get down to some shooting, of course, and these scenes are fairly good. Gere looks cool with his short haircut and Lou Reed jacket, and Willis gets a level-headed kick out of blowing up buildings with his neat sophisto-cannon.

You really have to wonder, though, why a man would go through this much trouble to shoot a person standing on a dais, in clear view, giving a speech. The workings of the script make Lee Harvey Oswald look like an idiot-savant. Or maybe the Warren Commission did that.

"The Jackal" has some severely brutal shootings, including one in which a guy gets his arm blown off by Willis. There's also some strong language, excluding Gere's brogue, which is pretty weak. Rated R. 123 minutes.

Related sites:

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• "The Jackal" - official site
• Internet Movie Database
  • "The Jackal"

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