The Day of The Jackal Film Review
“I’m beginning to get a feeling about the Jackal…”
I recall a time when the summer was a time of rest. No more, I guess. Especially at this stage in life. Ah, to be a kid again. Today, we have our children’s lives to coördinate: summer camps, summer school, sleep-overs and their friends (the size of basketball players) coming by. That’s busy enough, even with our own hectic day jobs always in play. It’s all too hurried, if you ask me, and time only seems to move more quickly with each orbit of the sun. And now Labor Day is on the horizon. I’m too old for this…
With that in mind, it is time once more for the blogger otherwise known as the Scientist Gone Wordy and I to add another of our duo posts in the series we started in the Spring of 2010. For this one, we break new ground as we examine the novel/film pairing of a famed, but fictional, political thriller. As usual, the wordy one will look at the text of a well-known novel later adapted to film, which I will review. In this case, she’ll be looking at one of the most celebrated page-turners to hit the national bestseller list 40 years ago in 1971, The Day of The Jackal. The factually based source novel by Frederick Forsyth also served the 1973 film adaptation of the same name. Rachel’s book review can be found here:
The Day of The Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
A brief synopsis of the film: The voiceover at the beginning of the film provides the notable context:
“August 1962 was a stormy time for France. Many people felt that President Charles de Gaulle had betrayed the country by giving independence to Algeria. Extremists, mostly from the Army, swore to kill him in revenge. They banded together in an underground movement, and called themselves the OAS.”
The OAS try to assassinate the French leader. And fail. The government’s ruthless reaction to the attempt takes a toll on the cadre as they’ve captured, tortured, and killed a number in their efforts to prevent any such political execution. By late Spring 1963, the group in tatters, the remaining OAS leadership has devised a daring plan to attain their goal. Since their organization is filled with government informers and spies, they’ll go outside of it to find a killer. They’ll use a supremely skilled professional foreign assassin to remove de Gaulle from power for them. The Englishman they select, his masterly preparation, and execution of that plan, along with the French directorate’s attempts to parry (with an ensuing manhunt) and prevent such an assassination, is the crux of this thriller.
[spoiler warning: some key elements of the film could be revealed in this review]
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Book in Life as Meme – 2011 Edition
My good friend over at Pop Culture Nerd is at it again!
This book title meme just won’t die — just like Charlie Hardie in the above novel or Joe Pike in the one below. And I always fall for it. She got me to engage in this on my old blog last year. And for those who wish to take part, all you have to do is finish the sentences PCN has come up with for this year’s edition using the title of books you’ve read this year. Her answers are always more clever than mine, too. Damn her! So, I might as well give in to it:
- One time at band/summer camp, I: suffered a Free Fall (Robert Crais)
- Weekends at my house are: L.A. Requiem (Robert Crais)
- My neighbor is: Not Bad for a Human (Lance Henriksen and Joseph Maddrey)
- My boss is: The Dramatist (Ken Bruen)
- My ex was: Known to Evil (Walter Mosley)
- My superhero secret identity is: The Last Detective (Robert Crais)
- You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry because: Hell is Empty (Craig Johnson)
- I’d win a gold medal in: The Drunkard’s Walk (Leonard Mlodinow)
- I’d pay good money for: Jack’s Return Home (Ted Lewis)
- If I were president, I would: have plenty of Fun and Games (Duane Swierczynski)
- When I don’t have good books, I: know This Book is Overdue! (Marilyn Johnson)
- Loud talkers at the movies should be: given an Expiration Date (Duane Swierczynski)
TMT: “Snap out of it!”
This is the next entry in a Theatre… a Movie… and a Time series that was begun here. While my earlier ‘date’ post logged my eye-opening revelation of who I came to notice, it was this movie-going experience that changed it all. Besides, this installment in the series seems fitting because today is that person’s birthday.
Loretta Castorini: “You ruined my life!”
Ronny Cammareri: “No, I didn’t.”
Loretta Castorini: “Oh, yes, you did! Oh, yes, you did! Y’know, you got them bad eyes, like a gypsy, and I don’t know why I didn’t see it yesterday. Bad luck! That’s what it is. Is that all I’m ever gonna have? I should have taken a rock and killed myself years ago.”
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January 16, 1988: Y’know, good, or even great, ‘first’ dates happen. Like bad ones, they occur often enough. It’s the ‘separating the wheat from the chaff’ that’s the hard part. I’ve now concluded, it is the follow-up social engagement, whether the first was a good or bad one, that sets the tone or breaks the connection between two people. I dated enough to find that out… the hard way. The really rare instances are those where things, or people, in your life become unclouded. Sometimes, surprisingly so. I guess I came to realize that because it happened to me… exactly once. My second movie date with the significant woman who would later become my wife (and the mother of my children) was that phenomenon.
Like our previous rendezvous a week earlier, she met me at the movie theater (I still wasn’t allowed to pick her up from her place). Although, that restriction who soon be lifted. The Wilshire Theatre (aka NuWilshire) was in the area I made my home at this stage in my life — Santa Monica. I’m not really sure why I suggested the romantic comedy Moonstruck for this gathering, but she did agree to it. However, this date seemed totally different from the first. Coincidental or not, like the character of Ronnie in the film, I could feel the world around me shifting when I was with her this time. Luckily for me, I didn’t hesitate or attempt to pull back, like other times in my existence. I watched the movie with her, and that was all the world I needed. Then, and ever since.
Happy Birthday, my love.
“Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either, but love don’t make things nice – it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and *die*. The storybooks are *bullshit*. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and *get* in my bed! “
The entire TMT series can be found here.
Reprise – Scene & Song: An American Werewolf in London and Bad Moon Rising
In commemoration of my all-time favorite werewolf film, released 30 years ago today, I send a shout-out to writer Damian Arlyn as he spotlighted this landmark work with a most excellent tribute piece, published on my friend Edward Copland’s blog, today. I enthusiastically recommend:
Beware the Moon and Stick To the Road
In honor of today’s celebration, and why I continue to sing the film’s praises, I updated and re-tasked an article I wrote on the old blog for last year’s Halloween. No disrespect intended to those who “… think The Howling is a much more complicated, visually striking and tonally successful mixture of horror, horror history and bloody comedy than Werewolf…”, but I remain firmly in London in this regard.
Looking back at things as I’m wont to do (my daughter and I inherited my mother’s nostalgia gene, so I have an excuse), I noted it is almost two three years ago that I published my very first Halloween-dedicated blog post. Hard to believe I’ve been blogging for that long. Among the films noted within the piece, I celebrated one of my all-time favorite werewolf films:
“The 1981 An American Werewolf in London is first on the list. At only 97 minutes, director John Landis created one of the best werewolf films, ever. Effectively moody, and with great bits of American and British humor thrown about, it still holds up well in story, even after a good many years. The one thing about this particular horror genre, that goes back to the original, The Werewolf, is its tragic, sad nature. And, Landis, though remembered for a lot of excesses in his films, recognized this fact when he brought this to the screen. If you saw this in the theater (as I once did), many were more than a little stunned by its final outcome (especially since it’s so easy to care for those plucky Yanks). The other wonderful thing about this film is its great soundtrack. Using many of the older, moon-themed songs, this really connected with the pop culture in a way seldom done before. If you’ve seen this movie, you know what I write about when you recall the use of CCR’s Bad Moon Rising as the pre-cursor to Rick Baker’s now famous transformation sequence of actor David Naughton. The year 1981 had another solid entertaining werewolf movie, The Howling. But, it is this one that I remember more dearly.”
So with 2010′s upgrade to the Blu-ray Disc version of the film, I decided to highlight and examine the clip I mentioned many months ago. It remains one of the sequences from the motion picture I remember most. Given the wonderful (some see them as grisly) shocks and effects throughout the film, this has to be one of its most quiet, but meaningful, progressions in it. In my mind it remains a testament to the care given to the movie and the craft by the filmmakers of the piece.
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TMT: “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
This is the next entry in a Theatre… a Movie… and a Time series that was begun here. This post also serves as a shout-out to my friend and author John Kenneth Muir. His series, the Cameron Curriculum, on filmmaker John Cameron (who, like me, recently turned 57) has been a distinct pleasure to follow this summer. As well, it provided a wonderful impetus for re-watching each of his films in the canon, which concludes today on JKM’s blog with this film.
“It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.”
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July 7, 1991: sometimes, I recall the strangest of things doing this series. This one has my mother-in-law’s prints all over it. There are some husbands that get along with their spouse’s mother right off the bat. Through the years, I even have known a couple of them. The others, like me, didn’t. At least, not at first. And it’s not that she was an awful person, either. Just formidable. She and I simply didn’t know how to communicate with each other from the start. My wife believed we were too much alike (we won’t go there with that thought, BTW). Still, I like to think her longstanding fondness of watching film (along with a deep love for her second daughter) were the common traits she and I shared — even if we warily circled each other like old adversaries.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day was the summer action blockbuster film of ’91. So much so, I couldn’t help but notice you-know-who’s excitement when critics/reviewers talked it up or showed clips on television that week. Given she didn’t go to movies like she once did, someone [wife: "Don't look at me."] came up with the idea to invite her mother to this one (my attendance for this film event was already a given). My wife says she only went “… to prevent you two from killing each other.” When the three of us showed up at the Century City Shopping Center that weekend, I didn’t expect anything memorable. So when my mother-in-law and I excitedly chatted the film up afterward on the way home, nobody was more surprised. I now like to think this movie-going experience started the bridge building. I actually miss the old battle-axe.
“Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator would never stop. It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice.”
The entire TMT series can be found here.
