Extras: Trailer, Making of The Jackal, Production Notes, Cast and Filmmakers,
Production Stills, Director's Commentary
Director:
Michael Caton-Jones
(Doc Hollywood, The Jackal, Memphis Belle, Rob Roy, Scandal, This Boy's Life)
Producers:
James Jacks, Sean Daniel, Michael Caton-Jones and Kevin Jarre
Screenplay
Chuck Pfarrer
Music:
Carter Burwell
Cast:
The Jackal: Bruce Willis
Declan Mulqueen: Richard Gere
Preston: Sidney Poitier
Valentina Koslova: Diane Venora
Isabella: Mathilda May
Lamont: Jack Black
Woolburton: Leslie Philips
The Jackal
is the 1990's remake of the Edward Fox film, The Day
Of The Jackal, updated with high-tech gadgetry and special effects.
Bruce Willis is the Jackal - the greatest assassin in history, out to
eliminate a top U.S. Government official. Declan Mulqueen (Richard Gere),
an imprisoned underground operative, is - as it happens - the only man who can
stop him. It's up to Sidney Poitier to send a thief to catch a thief.
All of this seems a bit bizarre because Gere's character has killed a number
of government bigwigs in the past and the Americans are effectively letting
him out, albeit under their supervision, to stop another one more murder,
at great cost to the U.S. taxpayer of course. Two wrongs don't make a right,
but this is a piece of flashy Hollywood fare where the rules don't always apply.
Bruce Willis continues to be one of the best actors of his generation, playing
many different roles throughout his career and doing similar throughout this
film as he changes outfits a great number of times to ensure he always fits in
but remains never to be recognised. On the other hand, Richard Gere piles on
the Oirish accent way too thick to the point where it sounds incomprehensible
and makes him sound ridiculous and Sidney Poitier is the FBI man who stumbles
from scene to scene reciting lines from the script as if he doesn't particularly
care, but rolls his eyes around just enough to throw viewers off the scent.
Diane Venora, as Major Valentina Koslova is worth a watch as the feisty
Russian agent playing second-fiddle to Poitier.
Overall, although you know exactly how this film will end given Hollywood's
propensity for good to always triumph over evil - thus negating one line of the
PAL laserdisc back cover's sleeve notes: "..and a story that's guaranteed to
always keep you guessing" - there is a great deal of fun to be had watching
Bruce carry out his deadly work.
Bruce Willis does his best Ned Flanders:
"Yippee-diddly-kay-ay, Mother-diddly-fucker!"
The picture is too dark on this DVD a lot of the time, even during outside
daytime scenes (I had to enhance the picture above), which is bizarre because the 1998 PAL Laserdisc was perfectly
fine, albeit non-anamorphic. At least this does have an anamorphic transfer.
Framed at 2.35:1, the widescreen ratio is the only way to watch this film as
the director utilises the frame to capture all the splendour of each city such
as Moscow, Helsinki, Montreal, Washington D.C. and Virginia, not to mention
the abundance of colours in chapter 19 during the brief Regatta boat race.
The average bitrate is 6.58Mb/s, frequently closing in on 9Mb/s.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix is nothing short of excellent. Carter
Burwell's magnificent score sets the pace of the film and draws the viewer
in, while your speakers will get a big workout from a number of key scenes
such as "The Real Test" (ch.17) - Bruce tests the big gattling gun for the first
time with and without a moving target, "Witherspoon's Mistake" (ch.21) - a radio
is set to switch on automatically and LOUD to distract the friendly
neighbourhood FBI folk and "The Jackal Strikes" (ch.26) - Bruce uses his
aforementioned BFG to tear seven shades of you-know-what out of the local
hospital in an attempt to assassinate the First Lady. Of course, if we had
been treated to the DTS 5.1 sound mix which comes on a separate Region 1 DVD
then that would be all the better. Dialogue is also available in Italian and
Spanish, but both are surround sound-only.
The extras consist of several pages of Production Notes that you'll read once only and a
Cast and Filmmakers section for the major actors and director, listing
the films in which they've been involved, but only up to 1997 when this film
came out.
The Making of The Jackal appears to have a running time of 47 minutes,
but is actually 24-minutes of 'making of', 14 minutes of deleted scenes some
of which apparently came from the centre of the film and repeated things we'd
already learned hence it was chopped, an alternate ending which isn't a
great deal different, a 2-minute Trailer in 4;3 fullscreen and a
Production Stills section.
Finally, the disc includes a feature-length director's commentary
from Michael Caton-Jones.
You can tell all of these extras from the second paragraph were taken
directly from the NTSC laserdisc because of the headings between each section.
The film is copiously chaptered with 31 spread throughout the two hours
and the menus are static, but the main one contains music from the score.
The subtitles come in 13 languages - English, Danish, Finnish, Dutch, Swedish,
Norwegian, Bulgarian, Polish, Czech, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish and
Hungarian.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
