Review by CARROLL McCUNE
Famed British film actress Lashana Lynch (“No Time to Die,” “The Woman King”)
portrays a gutsy MI6 agent in Carnival Films’ reimagining of Frederick Forsyth’s classic mystery novel “The Day of the Jackal.” Published in 1971, the thriller was the the first of six books by the best-selling British author that have been adapted to film. His documentary-style storytelling drew upon his experience as a Reuters foreign correspondent and MI6 agent during the Cold War era. Forsyth, now 86, served as consulting producer for this 2024 Sky television series.
An earlier 1973 film adaptation by director Fred Zinnemann (“From Here to Eternity” “A Man for all Seasons”) starred the suave Edward Fox as the Jackal. It closely followed the plot of the novel about a professional assassin who is hired by pro-Algerian, underground militants (OAS) to kill French President Charles de Gaulle, a national war hero, in 1963. After the French Action Service became aware of the OAS’s assassination plot by gruesomely torturing an OAS operative, the Foreign Minister hired a dogged police detective, Claude LeBel (French film immortal Michael Lonsdale), to learn the identity of the assassin code named the “Jackal” and track him down before de Gaulle made an open-air speech during a Liberation Day parade.
The enduring popularity of Zinnemann’s adaptation—considered one of the greatest. British films of the 20 th century—can be attributed to its fidelity to Forsyth’s narrative, which accurately depicted French colonial politics of the era. It subverted the traditional good vs. evil norms of the crime genre. The enigmatic Jackal was an admirable contender among equally unethical players; the ruthless terrorists who hired him and the tough guys of the French Action Service who pursued him.
The identity of the seemingly supernatural Jackal was never discovered in Forsyth’ snovel nor in Zinnemann’s film. He had no normalizing psychology but seemed as if an avatar of a mythological underworld that became a player in the French political underground. The Jackal’s anonymity, solitariness, flawless strategy, and emotional invulnerability accounted for all of the intrigue of the original story. Viewers, in spite of themselves, rooted for the Jackal’s success although he personified death. Operating under various false identities and disguises, no one could discover his real occupation and live. He killed effortlessly and escaped leaving no trace. But in Carnival Films’ reimagining of the classic, the Jackal (Eddie Redmayne, “Theory of Everything,” “The Danish Girl”) has a known identity, a personality with redeeming qualities, a wife, a family life, and emotional vulnerabilities. He also makes mistakes. All this normalizing robs the Jackal of his enigmatic, otherworldly mystique. Unfortunately, a mystery film classic cannot be improved upon by making the titular character less mysterious.
While the Jackal was the clear protagonist in Zinnemann’s film, the television series’ screenwriter/showrunner Ronan Bennett (“Top Boy” British crime series creator) made an MI6 intelligence officer named Bianca Pullman a co-protagonist. Bianca, a weapons expert, is an obsessive black woman disliked by her own family and called “a pain in the “arse” by her co-workers. She sacrifices assets and the lives of other agents in her fanatical pursuit of the Jackal. Replacing the role of the sympathetic Claude LeBel in the original with the nasty Bianca led to howls of ‘wokeism’ from fans of Frederick Forsyth.
In a September 10, 2023, interview with The Telegraph’s Peter Stanford, author Forsyth responded to the criticism that the volatile Bianca was substituted for the phlegmatic Claude Lebel in order to satisfy the race, class, and gender biases of today’s political culture. Sanford said that Forsyth “wondered aloud whether details in his original will have to be changed to suit the tastes of the cancel culture. Forsyth warned, ‘I’d be horrified if they tried to make ‘The Day of the Jackal’ woke…woke is stupid rather than sinful, but plain stupid.’”
Lashana Lynch, who views her character as culturally relevant, said, “We got to celebrate a different type of capturing a woman on the screen.” However, casting a black woman in a genre that has been dominated by white male relationships isn’t the issue. What really matters is that Ronan Bennett’s drastic character revisions change the central conflict of the story from Forsyth’s the state vs. terrorists to Bennett’s a lone assassin vs. three women: 1) the agent Bianca who vows to track him down and kill him herself, 2) his suspicious Spanish wife Nuria (Ursula Corbero), who is determined to find out how her husband makes so much money, and 3) his financier client’s liaison Zina Jansone (Eleanor Matsuuri) who inserts herself disruptively into his planning. While the original Jackal was indifferent to women, Bennett’s Jackal is vulnerable to all three of these women whom he has to constantly evade, deceive, or placate.
This shift in the central conflict of the story strips the Jackal of his likeness to an archetypal anti-hero of Greek tragedy. Although Gareth Neame, executive producer for Carnival Films, claimed that the plot of the 10-episode series stays true to the DNA of the original story, it clearly does not. Even Eddie Redmayne admitted that it was a “completely different piece.” Although the most memorable incidents in Zinnemann’s film are replicated, without Forsyth’s tragic fatalism the story becomes a spellbinding but straightforward modern-day manhunt.
In the book and the 1973 movie, the “Jackal” was a code name for the British assassin who had assumed the identity of Charles Calthrop; Cha+Cal equals the French word “chacal” meaning jackal. “The ancient Egyptians believed jackals were gods of the underworld, and that their evening yips and yowls were the haunting songs of the dead…” according to writer David Malakoff. This intriguing mythological allusion is lost in the made-for-television, modernized remake.
The success of Carnival Films’ “The Day of the Jackal” depends largely upon Eddie Redmayne’s mesmerizing persona and consummate acting skills, which keep his character absorbingly interesting. Lashana Lynch describes her character as “deadly and dark,” which she convincingly portrays. Power mshots of her from a low angle make her 5’9” physique seem even more imposing. Bianca rivals the Jackal in ruthlessness and, regardless of race or gender, her character does stay true to the DNA of the original story in which all of the Jackal’s cohorts and adversaries are as malevolent as himself.
Episodes often lapse into scenarios of the main characters’ family lives, which gives them depth but slows the action. Ronan Bennett and director Brian Kirk (“Game of Thrones” creator) focus on the Jackal’s ingenious disguises, weapons mastery, and phenomenal marksmanship. Redmayne said, “I love that you see the meticulousness with which he prepares. You see what his process is. His strategies are constructed with the minutia of a Swiss watch. I find great catharsis in watching that unfold. And then, also, it’s pretty thrilling when something goes awry.”
Carnival Films is the same studio that made the hit British television series “Downton Abbey.” Their “The Day of the Jackal” shares the same production style with spectacular settings in Eastern Europe, Spain, France, and Germany. Music by Volker Bertlemann and the theme song “This is Who I Am” by Celeste provide a James Bond-like soundtrack. Its plot development centers on contemporary issues. The Jackal’s primary target is the tech billionaire narcissist Ulle Dag Charles (Khalid Abdullah) who threatens to release software that will make every financial transaction in the dark web transparent with the object of exposing corporate criminals. The Jackal is contracted to kill Ulle by a cabal of New York financiers led by Timothy Winthrop (Charles Dance). His fee is $100 million and he has a deadline to complete the job but gets side-tracked by his need to exact vengeance on a former client who stiffed him.
Wall Street Journal TV critic John Anderson best explained the paradoxical appeal of the Jackal, writing, “The Day of the Jackal” is so relentlessly good…that you really don’t want to ask yourself the obvious question—such as “Why am I rooting for this scoundrel?” Well, because his antagonists are so charmless and his talent is so blindingly brilliant… The strategy of this adaptation is to juxtapose Mr. Redmayne’s character…with adversaries also morally compromised, or easy to loathe.”
Those who have seen all ten episodes say that the finale is shocking but inconclusive, leading to speculation that there might be a Season 2. “The Day of the Jackal” premiered in the US on Thursday, November 14 on Peacock’s streaming service. Seven episodes have been released so far to be followed by one per week every Thursday until the final two episodes air on December 12, 2024.
Watch “The Day of the Jackal (1973)” Zinnemann movie on Amazon Prime Video or
YouTube.
Click to watch a historical background of the original story.
