Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated gendarme on the assassin’s trail.
Fred Zinnemann's procedural thriller is a landmark of the genre — the meticulous, almost documentary-style unraveling of the Jackal's preparation and the parallel police investigation gives it an extraordinary narrative discipline. Edward Fox's cold, charismatic performance as a nameless assassin you know must fail is masterfully constructed tension. The plot is a model of procedural craft, building suspense through logistics rather than action. Novelty is high because the film essentially invented the modern assassin-procedural subgenre, and its detached, clinical tone remains singular. The ending, while historically inevitable and cleverly staged, is slightly anti-climactic by design — the audience always knows de Gaulle survives, which limits its emotional payoff. Cinematography is competent and well-composed but not visually adventurous.