The Day of the Jackal (1973) and The Jackal (1997) |
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| The Day of the Jackal
is a dynamite political thriller about a plot to
assassinate Charles Degaulle. The script was based on a
Frederick Forsyth novel. It was remade two decades later as The Jackal, with Richard Gere and Bruce Willis. The remake is the film where Gere did his notorious impersonation of the Lucky Charms leprechaun. Actually, despite our joking about his accent, I though that may have been Gere's best performance. In the remake, with DeGaulle already dead, they needed a livelier target. They thought about Al Gore, but he didn't seem any more alive than DeGaulle, so they settled on Hillary Clinton. I didn't make that up. It was a plot to assassinate Hillary. There wasn't any nudity in the remake, despite the magnificent presence of Mathilda May (no, she didn't play Hillary), but the original featured brief and sometimes murky nudity from Olga Georges-Picot and Delphine Seyrig. Delphine was already in her forties when she made this movie. Olga was 30ish and beautiful. According to the IMDb, Olga Georges-Picot committed suicide in 1997, after about a decade with no film credits. I couldn't find any corroboration or further detail on the suicide. IMDB summary: 7.5 out of 10. This score is good enough to make the IMDb Top 250 of all time, so this movie must have lost out by a hair. (Number 249 and 250 are at 7.5) IMDB summary of the remake: 5.7 out of 10. |