THE JACKAL (1997) - **

My problems with THE JACKAL aside, I gotta admit that such a picture where the hero is a foreign terrorist and the villain is a blue collar American wouldn't be produced in post-9/11 Hollywood, or at least I don't think it would be.

People always whine about remakes, but you know what my fear is with each new announced "re-imagining" pumped out? That the quality original movies are forgotten, ignored, or worse confused with (usually) their inferior retakes by less-informed people. I once worked at a video store years back where someone asked me to recommend a thriller. I suggested Fred Zimmerman's THE DAY OF THE JACKAL from the 1970s. If you haven't seen it, Netflix that sucker right now because it's a genre classic, if simply because it makes you tense and perky with anticipation in spite of you knowing the ending already. Now that's impressive! There is something down to Earth yet epic as almighty hell in Zimmerman's approach as cop Michael Lonsdale is having to chase down a man with no face, no name, no identity, no morals, no ideology, no allegiances in killer Edward Fox.

This customer thought I was being stupid or mistaken and kept trying to correct me that I was actually talking about THE JACKAL with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere. I said no, but it was in vain. I want to call him an asshole, but really just imagine all the good and decent people who've missed out on a cool as hell film simply because of this more recent and recognizable mediocre version. Where are the Nazis and their bonfires when you need them?

What's even more depressing is that Zimmerman to his dying breath sought to stop this rendition, which baffled the producers and Universal Studios because they were "great fans" of DAY. With the exception of John Carpenter on THE THING, those two words are like always a glaring warning sign, like how Rob Zombie and Michael Bay were "great fans" of HALLOWEEN and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. This is especially true with JACKAL, made unfortunately during the uninspired and boring days of 1990s Hollywood action cinema, when every flick trying to ape DIE HARD and LETHAL WEAPON missed the two points of why those classics rocked the casbah in the first place....(1) Characters and (2) The Story inbetween the stunt spectacles, a lesson Mr. Bay never seem to have learned.

If DAY took its sweet-ass narrative before coming through in the great climatic finale, along with the charm in Fox's precision methodolgy this side of the BOURNE movies in setting up the big hit, THE JACKAL is more concerned with meeting the quota in car explosions, shoot outs, and chase scenes. Interestingly, several similar, alright identical sequences from DAY are reused in JACKAL, yet they are impotent. With the same basic story, you can either shoot a taunt intelligent flick (DAY) and an incredibly dumb loud one (JACKAL).

Thing is, JACKAL starts out alright and promising in a matinee escapist pleasure sort of way....then again, so did DIE ANOTHER DAY. The FBI and Moscow cops kill a Russian mobster, and his brother gives the world's best assassin in Willis a $70 million contract to get revenge on American soil. JACKAL in retrospect is quite naively dated considering this concept was written during Russia's failure of a civic democracy, for the gangster could have bided his time, saved some cash, and throw bullets and cash at the Russian police force instead of the Yankees. Domestic law enforcement pacified, a deal then be made with the new masters like Putin to kick the Americans out, and walah no more problem.

The Feds in Sidney Poitier spring out Richard Gere from prison to help them because he's the only person alive who's seen the Jackal's face. Remember how before the Good Friday Agreement, that every Irishman in a Hollywood movie was either a IRA member, related to one, or a goddamn leprechaun? Anyway, Gere here just might be sporting the worst Irish accent I've ever heard in a movie. It's so bad, it's a mystery why the filmmakers didn't simply rewrite him into an Irish-American or something to salvage a lost cause. Gere's character is also another example of a pet peeve of mine with Tinseltown. Whenever a "bad man" is made the protagonist, a great mistake usually made is to try to make them heroic somehow to get us to like them. Why do we dig Clint Eastwood in those spagetti westerns or Snake Plissken without betraying the fact that in most other tales they would be the antagonist? Because we admire those bastards for being ruthless or their wits or their badass nature, that's why.

But with Gere in JACKAL, yeah he was a proud (Irish) Republican, but he was "only a gunrunner." That's supposed to make him seem not as awful? That's like your local high school drug dealer revealed to be only selling pot, not meth or coke. Still, at least THE JACKAL is going off on the classic action exploitation set-up, that of someone forced to kick some ass to save his own. The problem is when out of damn nowhere this side of a on-set rewrite, it's revealed that Gere is doing this for revenge against Willis. You know why most revenge plottings work? Because those films set themselves up early on to milk that natural emotion of vengeance, but with JACKAL you never buy it and unable to suckle that teat. Plus, how the hell did Poitier know that fact if the Feds are totally ignorant about Willis?

Really, why can't we have more unapologetic scumbag action heroes? Better yet, someone else than a pussy like Gere?

You're reading this review, and with so much venom you wonder probably why I didn't give it a lower grade. That's because of Willis. He's played baddies before in PLANET TERROR and THE SIEGE, but JACKAL is his only undisputed evil part from what I know and it's obvious that he's relishing the fun in being such a cold ruthless son of a bitch for once. To be honest, he's rather solid actually. There is a great scene where after he seduced someone to gain their parking permit, he's calmly eating Korean food when he simply pulls out a gun and pulls the trigger, then goes back to munching away. This shit is second-nature to him this side of breathing. Another good sequence is when he learns that an engineer in a young (and thinner) Jack Black is trying to blackmail him for more cash, and Willis uses him as target practice for his super cannon rifle. I guess Willis hated ENVY too.

But even JACKAL in the end jobs out Willis as a psychopath, as if it had to ruin everything just for fun. You suck movie.

I guess I could write another 1,000 words about how the midway confrontation between Willis and Gere castrates the potential power of the desinent showdown, or how Willis makes an idiotic mistake simply to move the story along, or better yet an idiotic shot when prisoner/terrorist/snitch Gere is showing the Feds how to corner off the parameter on a map. With those stupid Feds in charge, how 9/11 didn't happen sooner I'll never know. I could also ponder about how I realized that with the scene in the garage between Willis and hijackers, that this is a mindless movie that actually has the gall to thinks its clever like the recent BEOWULF. I might even mention that you'll howl with laughter with a character comes out of nowhere in the conclusion.

Instead, I'll write about current popular revisionism from black film buffs like Spike Lee about how Sydney Poitier was simply an Uncle Tom, a friendly dark face for whitey, aka the "Magical Negro." They might have a point, but you know what? Poitier is still a pretty good actor, and considering how crappy his part and lines are in JACKAL, he's still cool here. Now that's killer.