Review of The Day of the Jackal (1973) by Mikko E — 26 Jan 2008

An intelligent British psychopath is hired by a group of high-ranking French army officers to assassinate president Charles de Gaulle because they believe he is a traitor who have Algeria to the Arabs. They want to overthrow him and establish a Latin American style military dictatorship in order to be able to conquer Algeria back. The funniest thing about this plot is that this cabal actually existed; it was called the OAS; they actually did try to kill de Gaulle in 1962. This film is about a fictitious second attempt on de Gaulle's life after the failure of the first attempt.

Problems with this film:

1.) French characters speak English with each other. This is one of my pet peeve. It annoys me every time I see a film made in English that includes characters who would not have spoken English in real life.

2.) The police are constantly just one step behind the assassin. The man was supposed to be the best professional killer in the world, and yet he only narrowly avoids the police several times.

3.) The allegedly best detective in France is a humble grey middle aged bureaucrat who has never been assigned to such high-profile cases before, and yet his superiors are somehow aware of his superhuman capabilities, as if finding the assassin somehow depended on this one man alone.

4.) The assassin is supposed to kill de Gaulle on 14th of July, the national day, when there are thousands of armed policemen and soldiers in the immediate vicinity of the president because of the military parades in Paris. Surely a professional assassin would have chosen a better day to kill the president, i.e. basically any other day of the year.