Big budget 'The Jackal' tosses out bare bones plot

Big budget 'The Jackal' tosses out bare bones plot

By Laksmi Pamuntjak

JAKARTA (JP): The year was 1973, and the movie was Fred
Zinnemann's The Day of The Jackal. The sight of Edward Fox,
standing with his lightweight rifle, eyes ablaze with the cold
detachment of the truly insane, not only spoke volumes for a
decade traumatized by political assassination and mass paranoia.
It also established the movie as a classic in the political
thriller genre.

Now imagine Bruce Willis, three decades down the track,
fiddling with an enormous, computer-controlled Gatling gun,
playing "cool" as only he knows how. It's just as well that the
filmmakers have gone out of their way saying that The Jackal,
directed by Michael Caton-Jones (Rob Roy, Scandal), is no remake
of Zinnemann's masterpiece.

Willis, whose inflationary US$70 million fee is a staggering
stupefying leap from Fox's paltry $500,000, makes his Jackal
merely a sleeker version of his last stint as a Man with No Name.
In last year's Last Man Standing, he was also a gun-for-hire and
a professional to boot.

Yes, in the freewheeling 1990s, culture vultures make sure
that there's a new take on everything. Poor Zinnemann, who passed
away in March this year, was reported to have been violently
opposed to this project. In truth, he agonized for naught.

In The Jackal, the bones of Frederick Forsyth's celebrated
story are barer than ever, the only surviving feature being the
central idea about a highly-paid assassin stalking a high-profile
target.

The rest is pure 1990s formula, although the pace is curiously
sedate for a beat-the-clock thriller. Like Mission Impossible
before it, it has cerebral pretensions but comes off wearing all
its surprises in plain sight. Seek and you shall not find even a
splinter of wit or imagination in this movie.

On the one hand, this kind of shallowness and lethargy
reflects the ideological void created by the demise of the Cold
War (witness the movie's impassioned opening montage of
communism's dying moments).

On the other hand, it is a typical Hollywood exercise in
stupefaction. At the end of the day, after all the crafty bravura
of yet another natural born killer, the
whole experience is totally meaningless.

Just take a look at the radically shifting premise. Whereas
The Day of the Jackal tells the story of a group of French
military extremists trying to overthrow de Gaulle's government
for granting independence to Algeria, The Jackal zeros in on a
Russian mobster's vendetta against the Feds for accidentally
killing his brother.

After all, this is The Jackal of the 1990s: the difference
between "mission" or "personal retribution" has no purchase on
his conscience than does the fact that he's being grossly
overpaid.

Sure, the Russkies are back, and the fate of America, as
usual, hangs by its habitual thread. Yet there's no more mission,
screams the movie, there's only money. And so it takes the fight
out of anyone trying to look for "issues".

The problem is that this indifference translates itself all
too starkly on screen such that broadcasting Bruce Willis as
"ice" and Richard Gere as "fire" couldn't be further away from
the truth.

Granted, Val Kilmer's giddy self-obsession in The Saint is no
competition to Willis' special brand of cool: he's cool because
he doesn't try to be cool.

But despite his galaxy of identities, there are no little
curls of suspense which come from waiting for fresh tricks and
disguises, or from generally watching a devil incarnate at play.

Like its predecessor, the movie aims to create tension through
a double-chase, with the authorities trying to take the Jackal
out before he gets to his mysterious quarry. This is where
Richard Gere, as convicted IRA terrorist Declan Mulqueen, steps
into the picture.

In a way it is a blessing that the monumentally wooden Gere
doesn't try to clamor for attention (prime examples of typical
Richard Gere overkill can be found in Mr. Jones and First
Knight).

But underplaying a role described as "fire" proves to be even
more unsettling, as Gere reluctantly sheds his oiled, wise-guy
swagger in favor of an emotionless stab at low-key intelligence.
His only salvation lies in his moment of truth during the final
scene in the New York subway. Not since Mission Impossible's Tom
Cruise was perched atop a TGV running at full speed have we seen
a grimace so convincing.

Furthermore, while Gere's Irish accent meanders from one side
of Ireland to this side of ridiculous, the movie's drab and
lifeless proceedings do not lend any credence to his almost
psychic leaps of intuition, nor his new-found action persona.

In fact, the Willis-Gere blood feud is pure souffle compared
to the memorable private wars between Clint Eastwood and John
Malkovich (In the Line of Fire), Johnny Depp and Christopher
Walken (Nick of Time) and, of course, Nicolas Cage and John
Travolta (Face/Off).

On closer scrutiny, even the Jackal's IQ is highly suspect:
impressive minimalism aside, he has too many branches in his
inefficient head. This explains why the movie never lets him
dwell on his method, preferring instead to give him sporadic
moments of fawning lechery. Linger a tad longer, and it's easy to
see the schmalzy cracks in logic.

Caton-Jones further dumps his actors in a sea of boringly
straightforward dialog that does nothing to Forsyth's legacy (no
wonder Chuck Pfarrer's screenplay is credited instead to Kenneth
Ross' screenplay of the 1973 classic).

His attempt to dignify the cast is, at best, hit-or-miss. He
misfires with Sidney Poitier, whose performance as FBI Deputy
Director Carter Preston is weightless and outdated, but scores
with Diane Venora. The latter not only cloaks her portrayal of
steely CIA operative Major Koslova in a sense of mounting
urgency, but also a Garboesque mix of elegance and aloofness.

What's likely to stay with us after The Jackal has ended is
those teasingly fitful forays into hipsterdom; like The Saint
before it, the soundtrack is flooded with the likes of Primal
Scream, Massive Attack and Bush. Indeed, "freshening" the movie's
demographics seems to be foremost in the espionage genre's post-
Cold War priorities.