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The Day of the Jackal

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United Kingdom, France · 1973
Rated PG · 2h 23m
Director Fred Zinnemann
Starring Edward Fox, Terence Alexander, Michel Auclair, Alan Badel
Genre Action, Thriller

It is the tumultuous early 60s in France, and President Charles de Gaulle faces constant attempts on his life by members of the aborted FFL. Disgruntled former FFL officers eventually hire a professional assassin named ‘The Jackal’, giving him a half a million dollars to kill de Gaulle. The Jackal doesn’t realize there is a detective on his trail….

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60

Time Out London by

Low on documentary conviction and political context, but an intriguing exercise in concealing the obvious.

80

Empire by Ian Nathan

There is true beauty in the realism at the heart of what could come across a fanciful movie plot, with its documentarian coolness of execution, the crisp rhythms of Zinnemann’s direction, we feels we are staring through a window into the shadowy recesses of history.

91

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

In one of the movie’s most famous scenes, Fox practices with his specially engineered rifle (which has been built into a pair of crutches), and as he takes his shots at a practice melon, he keeps tweaking the aim. It all looks very cool, until Fox finishes his adjustments, and fires a bullet that makes this stand-in for de Gaulle’s head explode.

100

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Fred Zinnemann’s The Day of the Jackal is one hell of an exciting movie. I wasn’t prepared for how good it really is: it’s not just a suspense classic, but a beautifully executed example of filmmaking. It’s put together like a fine watch. The screenplay meticulously assembles an incredible array of material, and then Zinnemann choreographs it so that the story--complicated as it is--unfolds in almost documentary starkness.

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