Word: jackal
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...Jackal. Fred Zinneman directs a thriller about the attempted assassination of de Gualle by a hireling of the OAS (with Edward Fox looking like the Englishman's version of Robert Redford). The movie teases you, catapulting from one possible peak finish to another, and ends like a snowball that has suddenly mushroomed into an abominable snowman. Pi Alley...
...writer required paragraphs to detail the procedures of an international man hunt, not to mention the procedures of the Jackal himself, a hired gun employed by disaffected French army officers to assassinate Charles de Gaulle...
...handling of such a routine matter as an official car wheeling into the driveway of a ministry, or its occupant proceeding on his way up the stairs to his appointment, he tersely demonstrates the pomposity of power and its near impotence when confronting the anarchic brilliance of the Jackal. These darting insights in turn are emphasized by the quick restlessness of the killer's movements and the move ments of the camera as it follows him on his devious path toward his intended victim...
...understands what the oldtime action directors knew instinctively: violence and death do not arrive in pompous slow motion but shock us with their suddenness. Yet Zinnemann's handling of violence is tasteful; it also enhances the audience's uneasiness, since it can never be certain when the Jackal will, without warning, dispatch someone who unwittingly threatens his master plan...
...might be argued that The Day of the Jackal is an essentially trashy and improbable work, unworthy of Zinnemann's craft. But his careful detailing has a fascination all its own and, as it accumulates, it distracts us from our knowledge that De Gaulle died peacefully and privately years after the events alleged here. Eventually we begin to earnestly wonder if the net we see drawing ever more tightly around the Jackal will close in time or whether he will succeed in squirming through it to accomplish his mission impossible...