The Jackal (1997)
Directed by Michael Caton-Jones
Hired by a powerful member of the Russian mafia to avenge an FBI sting that left his brother dead, a psychopathic hitman known only as The Jackal proves an elusive target for the people charged with the task of bringing him down: a deputy FBI director, a Russian MVK Major, and a jailed IRA terrorist who can recognize him.
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What critics compared The Jackal to
The Jackal is a trashy, frenetic remake of Fred Zinnemann's 1973 The Day of the Jackal, a fascinatingly deadpan Continental manhunt thriller that served up its trickery and disguises with a fair degree of sophistication and wit.
Inspired by the rough outline of the 1973 film "The Day of the Jackal," which focused on a plot to do away with French leader Charles de Gaulle, "The Jackal" probably sounded good enough to fill out the dance card of stars like Bruce Willis and Richard Gere and director Michael Caton-Jones.
You pretend you're making a remake of "The Day of the Jackal," Fred Zinnemann's 1973 thriller based on the Frederick Forsyth novel about the assassination plot against Charles De Gaulle.
In director Michael Caton-Jones's loosely based remake of Fred Zinnemann's The Day of the Jackal (1973), the classic theme of using a criminal to catch a criminal is employed.
Directed by Michael Caton-Jones; written by Chuck Pfarrer, based on the motion picture screenplay "The Day of the Jackal" by Kenneth Ross; director of photography, Karl Walter Lindenlaub; edited by Jim Clark; music by Carter Burwell; production designer, Michael White; produced by James Jacks, Sean Daniels, Caton-Jones and Kevin Jarre; released by Universal Pictures.
Fred Zinneman's masterful 1973 adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's bestselling novel "The Day of the Jackal" is unforgivably mutilated in "The Jackal," an alleged "remake" that resembles neither Forsyth's novel nor Zinneman's film sufficiently to claim any relation to either.
No doubt inspired by the original Day of the Jackal screenplay, new writer Chuck Pfarrer has come up with a script that is decidedly more polished, thought-provoking and exciting than his previous work for such B-grade films as Navy SEALS and Hard Target.
That last sentence says “Joe Eszterhas,” who is, of course, source stuffer of this lurid thrill pillow (the film was co-written by Leora Barish and Henry Bean), directed knowingly but with screaming absence of character by Michael Caton-Jones (“Rob Roy,” “The Jackal”).
Directed by Michael Caton-Jones ("Rob Roy," "The Jackal"), it's so utterly convinced it's a tense psycho-sexual thriller that it can't hear the audience laughing at it.
Caton-Jones' The Jackal (1997) is a much more lurid movie than the original, but it's also a lot more fun.�…
In mood and style, Ronin is more like 1973's The Day of the Jackal than 1997's The Jackal.