On Foxtel and streaming on Binge - A new version of THE DAY OF THE JACKAL (Ronan Bennett writer and creator, UK, 2024)

 

In disguise. Eddie Redmayne as The Jackal

I remember I think about four things from Fred Zinnemann’s long but quite involving The Day of the Jackal from 1973. The dead child’s tombstone used for a fake passport, the watermelon being exploded, the tracking of the Jackal across France via those little cards that you used to fill out at every lodging place and then the moment when he has De Gaulle in his gunsights…. The last one was essential. The assassin had to get that close… 

 

The book developed a life of its own. Infamous Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez who was given the code name "Carlos" because of his South American roots. was later dubbed "The Jackal" by The Guardian  after one of its correspondents reportedly spotted the novel  on the bookshelf of a friend's apartment in which Sánchez had stashed some weapons. Wikipedia punctures this a little by noting the book belonged to a resident in the apartment, not Sánchez, who probably never read it. Still the name stuck and the two Jackals are probably confused in the public mind.

 

Ronan Bennett’s update dispenses with the passport business. The Jackal has a whole draw full of fake passports at his disposal, revealed when his wife breaks into his sealed room and discovers that the 21^st century Jackal is, like Fantomas and Judex from a century ago, a master of disguise. 

 

In a piece in The Guardian writer and creator Ronan Bennett delves into the novel To him "the Jackal is an enigma -  cold, ruthless and solitary, we never learn his real name. My first inclination was to go with this stripped back version, the assassin as ghost.

 

“But the more I thought about it….the more I could see that it would be interesting to watch the lone wolf in action – no name, no identity, no family, no lovers – only to slowly reveal that this is a man with an identity, a history and psychological and emotional needs. In reality, no one is totally alone.”

 

Which is a large part of the reason why the series is strung out to more than nine hours – Feuillade indeed. But also with the later eps whole hours pass by with the plot which we assume will end as in the book and the Zinnemann film with the Jackal’s capture or demise, barely moving towards the final showdown. Episode 9 seemed to take that to extremes with the lengthy explanations of the Jackal’s military history and his slide into contract killing. How he became a master of disguise remains unexplained.

 

Then comes the biggest shock of all. The Jackal is too good to let go and every expectation is reversed. The last we see of him is of the hot pursuit by motor boat into…series 2…and there is a major character loss just before all this happens. That stopped me dead almost as much as the exploding watermelon.