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The Day of the Jackal Movie Review

The Day of the Jackal is a 1973 political thriller film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox. It is an immensely overrated, tedious feature.

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“Well, he won’t listen to his secret service and he’s not

the sort of man to stay out of the public eye“

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In the 1960s in France, members of the French Foreign Legion hire a man who agrees to kill the heavily guarded President Charles de Gaulle for gain. The French cops sniff around to nab him. While heavily lauded by most critics now and back then, I have to disagree with the assessment that this is somehow a great and even entertaining movie. It’s nothing of the sort. In fact, it’s among the most boring thrillers out there, which is something a thriller should never feel like.

Yes, this film is two and half hours long and it feels long. This is because the glacial pacing, bad structure and a lack of more memorable and eventful plot points and thrills all led to a very slow, tiresome viewing experience. Too often while watching it I lost interest entirely as the movie needed to be awoken from its slumber with more thrills and momentum that never came.

There is also the problem of weak character development, which was an issue for a story that really needed strong characters to pull it off properly. Edward Fox was quite memorable in the main role, but the character was slim and weakly developed. The others fared even worse as they got very little development.

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The Day of the Jackal has very good dialogue, that goes without saying. But a thriller shouldn’t be so stagey and dialogue-heavy in its approach as it impeded on the impact of its thrills. The lack of score also hurt it in the long run as this genre benefits most from an exciting score. The cinematography, editing and directing are all very strong as the movie is technically efficient, but its script left a lot to be desired.