Okay, here's the deal. Sit back, grab your Ovaltine and graham crackies, cozy up in your warm and fuzzy blankey, and Uncle Doc is going to tell you a fairy tale. All snug as a bug in a rug? Good.
Once upon a time, there was a movie studio. The studio decided that it was tired of making new movies, and would rather just dust off some old ones and do remakes. They decided to update the plots, so that the movies were set in the present instead of the past, 'cause their stacks of expensive spiral-bound printouts showed them that "period" movies don't make as much money as "current" ones. They decided to hurl tons of money at the screen, so the films would look so shiny that nobody'd notice the lack of stories. And then the studio would release these "new" movies behind a fat ad campaign and fast trailers, grab a beefy opening day take, and then cash in on the foreign market to fill the company coffers and make the stockholders happy.
Oh! Did I tell you the name of this story? I'm sorry. It's called, "How The Day of the Jackal became The Jackal." A tense WWII story becomes a ho-hummer of a "techno-thriller," full of flash and star power, but hopelessly drowning in its own hyped-up juices.
The title character, The Jackal (Bruce Willis), is a hitman, the best in the business. He's hired as payback for the death of the brother of Random Terrorist #1, who was killed in a cooperative arrest made by Russian intelligence officers and FBI agents, here led by Special Agent Preston (Sidney Poitier). The Jackal is to pop a high-profile government official for revenge.
One catch here. Nobody knows who the target is, only that a target has been chosen. And no one has ever seen The Jackal before. He's known only by reputation and record. Ooooh, wait. One man has seen him. Enter Declan Mulqueen (Richard Gere), IRA operative and convict, serving 50 years in the slam. Preston approaches him with a deal only the government could pull -- help capture The Jackal, and get some time lopped off the near-life sentence. Mulqueen agrees, and is put into the custody of Russian officer Valentina Koslova (Diane Venora). He contacts his old girlfriend, Isabella (Mathilda May), another operative who has her own little vendetta with The Jackal, and off we trot.
One of the main problems is in the technique used to tell the two stories. We hop back and forth between Mulqueen's hunt for The Jackal and The Jackal's preparations for the hit. I'm all for creative editing and parallel storylines, but here we're splattered with a random barrage of five to ten-minute segments, killing any attempts at character development. If Mulqueen wasn't spelled out as the good guy here, it'd be hard to pick who to root for. Our choice? An IRA terrorist as wooden as an Edgar Bergen bridge partner or the master hitman who grabs disguises off Burt Reynolds' hair rack.
Director Michael Caton-Jones (Rob Roy) seems to have missed the mark here. The film clomps along like a soldier in the mud. The soggy pacing only draws more focus to the implausibilities in the plot, and, by the last act, we're left begging for the inevitable explosions, helicopters, gunfights, and malarkey, setting up the trite mano-a-mano square-off between Mulqueen and The Jackal. Real men gotta beat the crap out of one another....right? It's a rule.
The biggest shame of it all is the waste of good talent. Willis and Gere are among our better leading men, able to mix character study with heroics when asked. Why weren't they asked to do so here? Willis could have e-mailed in this thing without missing a Planet Hollywood opening, and Gere only looks interested when his Irish accent slips. Venora is a talented actress, but she never gets to do anything here. And, would somebody please tell me, how can you get a stiff performance out of Sidney Poitier? This is the guy who actually made Jimmy Walker watchable in Let's Do It Again. All he does here is squint and whisper. Why bother showing up at all?
As techno-thrillers go, hand me a Tom Clancy juggernaut or Air Force One. This thing could've been a high-tension tightrope walk. Instead, it's like a demolition derby. It can be entertaining at times, but, in the long run, you're just waiting to see which wreck will happen last. If you're up for a hot mug of mediocrity, then The Jackal is your cup of tea. If you're looking for a slick, taut, edge-of-your-seat thriller, head down to the local video emporium and rent the original The Day of the Jackal, so you can see what the Suits decided needed freshening up. And, then maybe, you'll live happily ever after.
Copyrighted image courtesy of Universal Pictures.
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under the knife