Rating: 
Summary: A Movie That Should Be More Popular
Review: I personally love this movie. This movie features Bruce Willis as the Jackal, an assassin hired to kill a high level U.S. Government official. The Jackal has many identities, costumes, and contacts to help him along the way. The FBI, obviously trying to stop the Jackal before he kills, turn to the one type of person most unlikely to help them.... a terrorist. Deklin Moqueen, played well by Richard Gere, is enlisted to stop the Jackal due to their past history together. There are some shocking twists and turns along the way before the end. The end result is a movie that is unnecessarily being torn apart by critics, but will always have a nice spot in my DVD collection.Note: Jack Black makes an appearance in this movie. This is one of the first movies I remember seeing him in. I won't give away what happens to him, but it definitely left an imprint in my mind.
Rating:
Summary: BRUCE'S FATAL KISS
Review: What can you say about a movie in which Bruce Willis plants two whoppers on his co-star---especially when it's a man!!! That's only one of the surprises found in this retelling of Day of the Jackal. Since today's society barely remembers Charles DeGaulle, director Michael Caton Jones and the screenwriter decided to update it and target a more "modern" victim----the First Lady.
Aptly directed by Caton-Jones, this JACKAL is really a movie on its own, borrowing the title and main premise from Frederick Forsyth's popular novel. Bruce Willis plays the Jackal, a nasty and villainous assassin, who has no qualms about shooting people, even his male comrade (which of course is merely one of Willis' many disguises). Seeing Willis in such an anti-Willis role (like Mortal Thoughts and Death Becomes Her) is always a pleasure and he delivers a very solid performance.
Richard Gere will never match the perfection of accents like Meryl Streep, but Gere has a presence that always lifts a film. He gets to play the good guy this time, and does well. Diane Venora as Valentina, the Russian cop, is splendid..Venora is one of our most overlooked and underappreciated actresses. She is great in this role. Sidney Poitier is bland, but effective. Jack Black is annoying but effective in his small but impressive appearance.
I liked this movie; it is escapism and well done.
Rating: 
Summary: More Mutt than Jackal
Review: I learned recently that Tom Cruise and Mike Nichols had toyed with the idea of collaborating on a remake of The Heiress, with Cruise subbing for Montgomery Clift as Morris. To this end, they scheduled a viewing of said classic, sat through it, looked at each other...and ruefully concluded that with all due respect, there was no WAY they could come up with anything to compare with what they had just seen, much less better it. The project, mercifully, died in utero.
Would that Michael Caton-Jones had possessed a similar grasp of reality and lack of hubris.
Fred Zinnemann's 1973 The Day of the Jackal is on my shortlist of perfect films. The quintessential political thriller, it carries not an ounce of fat--there's not one extraneous frame or word of dialogue to mar the near-perfect visual re-creation of Frederick Forsyth's novel based on factual events in early-1960's France. Despite knowing its outcome before we even start watching, we're nevertheless on edge throughout the entire film, awed by the completely convincing cat-and-mouse game to which we're privy between two equally-matched, consummate professionals. Neither is personally involved with the task at hand--they're both just doing the jobs for which they've been hired.
This film, on the other hand, is an abomination. Instead of Charles de Gaulle, the First Lady is targeted for assassination. Edward Fox's sleek, elegant Jackal is replaced by a mugging Bruce Willis, and it would seem that Sidney Poitier (who must've needed the money) is meant to be the equivalent of Michel Lonsdale's plodding, henpecked police inspector. What this amounts to is that we're treated to a predictably 90's-style counterpoint of physical types: Willis is white, Poitier is black. The whole effect, unfortunately, comes off beige.
Myriad (gratuitous) characters are thrown into the pot, including Richard Gere as an incarcerated IRA terrorist with a bone to pick, sporting, in addition to one of the corniest Irish brogues in cinema history (right up there with Gable's Parnell), his trademark American Gigilo/Jesse Lujack swagger. I kept hoping Jerry Lee Lewis would break into "Breathless"--it would've been an improvement over the pedestrian soundtrack. In addition, we're forced to deal with--God help us--"character development" (the beauty of the original is that we're spared such contemporary "essentials" as motivation, psychology, romance, slow-motion confrontations, or even much of a soundtrack). High-tech equipment (including quasi pre-GUI computers and a rather unsubtle "weapon of choice," which we're asked to believe is produced by someone--no doubt a savant of sorts--who probably couldn't order a hamburger at White Castle) and the obligatary shock-soaked special effects (including buckets of blood) are, presumably, meant to compensate for the woeful lack of substance.
The Spotlight Reviewer is correct about Zinnemann's wanting to disassociate himself and his masterpiece from this mess, and his insistence on the title change; he died soon afterward with his stellar reputation intact. I was unaware that Forsyth was similarly vocal but I'm not surprised. I wish it were possible to assign a zero-star rating to this gimmicky, self-indulgent disaster, if only on the basis of its rubbing our noses in Hollywood's inability to come up with and develop new material--how many inferior remakes of classics will we continue to be forced to deal with each year?
My suggestion is to avoid this film at all cost and acquaint yourself with the original (available on Amazon for a pittance; you can't afford NOT to own it), a textbook example of how to produce a classic, despite its being given unsurprisingly pedestrian treatment on DVD by--guess which studio?--Universal. Contrast that disk with this Collector's Edition and all its extras and you're forced to wonder (alas, yet again) who's making the decisions over there and on what basis, especially considering that this film--deservedly--sunk like a stone almost immediately following its release.
Rating:
Summary: A Movie That Should Be More Popular
Review: Bruce Willis really is believable as the legendary Assassin by the name of the Jackal. This movie takes you from Europe to the USA to Canada and back. There are so many scenes where you bristle with anxiety due to Willis' intense manner. This may be the best Willis performance ever. The movie is violent, yet, it is to an extreme, not gorey violence but it reflects the violent nature of the legend. Richard Gere is cast well, a little less believable than Willis, yet he does a good job of being intense in tracking Carlos the Jackal. The issue here is what will Jackal do next? Can he be stoppped? Jack Black plays a very believable role of a somewhat bystander who meets a very violent end. You may want to close your eyes for that one. I recommend not drinking any caffiene before this movie because it creates an edge right from the beginning. What was telling to me was that every interaction that Willis has creates tension, whether or not he is violent, you feel he may be at any time. This movie of course is not for everyone yet it is not an action thriller that is silly in nature with gratuitous violence. It seems more of a lesson of the violent nature of the worst criminals in the world.
Rating:
Summary: a cheap imitation of a beautiful original
Review: Even with nothing better to do this film was a total waste of time. It hurt's to watch each and every moment of this movie-- especially if one compares this cheap imitation, with its overblown, and overbombed scenes to the original Day of the Jackal. By the last scene it left me calling for the blow up of the first lady to bring some interest to the movie.
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