The Day of the Jackal was on TV tonight. I’ve always enjoyed this movie, but only got to watch bits of it tonight. I like the strategizing, the old fashioned police work, the mind game between the Jackal and Lebel…even though they never meet till the last few minutes of the movie, and I really love how we never find out who the Jackal was.
How could they ever have caught this guy without computers? All the thousands of pieces of paper we see both the British and the French wading through searching for names and faces…and yet it started with the wrong name…Charles Calthrop. Such an interesting puzzle to watch getting put together and taken apart and put together again.
I have a friend that wouldn’t like this movie…insufficient action. She likes things moving along and things taking place. I don’t think she’d like this movie too much because it’s more of a mind game. But the tension as we move toward Paris and De Gaulle is superb. And the funny thing is…before watching the movie, we know De Gaulle wasn’t assassinated and yet the movie has us worried up to the end. Too bad the re-make was such a disaster.