Directed by Michael Caton-Jones
Running Time: 2:02
Among my friends, for some reason The Jackal was the most highly anticipated movie of the year. For months they talked about wanting to see it, and how good it looked, and boy were we let down. Bruce Willis plays The Jackal, a hit-man for hire who is hired to kill someone high up in the U.S. Government. Richard Gere is Declan Mulqueen an IRA terrorist who has actually seen the Jackal. So the F.B.I. take Declan out of prison and use him to track the Jackal. All I have to say is, for someone who only 7 people have ever seen, the Jackal seemed pretty easy to find. He changes outfits regularly, but for no apparent reason. He has a heart of stone, and we see that when he kills people left and right for no real purpose except that they're in the way. And the final scene is quite boring, and quite predictable. I thought that this would be a mind bending as well as action film. I figured we'd actually have to think about where the Jackal was, and what he was going to do next. But they managed to track him everywhere he went, and they never explained how. Information just came in and somehow they knew, they just knew, it was the Jackal. Willis gives a fine performance, as usual, but Gere seems lost in his own accent. Sometimes its there, sometimes its not. And would the F.B.I. really let one terrorist out of jail, so they can track down another one? When there was action, I liked it. When the Jackal (who by the way, we never figure out who he is, or why he does what he does) buys the gun contraption, that was fun. In fact, whenever Willis was on screen the movie picked up, but when we went back to Gere and the F.B.I. tracking him, the movie slowed down. Definitely not what I expected. This would be a good movie to rent someday, but it wasn't all that great in the theater.
