Film Review: The Day of the Jackal

I’ll put my hands up here and admit that I am in awe, not only of this film, but of its lead actor, Edward Fox, the Jackal himself.

The bloody Jackal

I make this admission so that you can accept from word go that this is not an impartial and purely technical review. It is, in essence, a mini-sermon on why I think I love it so much, and why I think you should too.

Firstly though, a nod to the book. A novel about the 1960s, published first in 1971 by Frederick Forsyth, one of the UK’s pre-eminent thriller writers. It captured everything about that time perfectly. The first generations of disaffected post-war colonial youths, abandoned by their leaders. The British, proud and self-righteous, the French, disorganised, disillusioned and delusional. To the rest of Europe, and even in most of France, the French-Algerian conflicts were a seen as but footnote…