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Synopsis
It is
the early 60s in France. The remaining survivors of the aborted
French Foreign Legion have made repeated attempts to kill
DeGaulle. The result is that he is the most closely guarded
man in the world. As a desperate act, they hire The Jackal,
the code name for a hired killer who agrees to kill French
President De Gaulle for half a million dollars. We watch his
preparations which are so thorough we wonder how he could
possibly fail even as we watch the French police attempt to
pick up his trail. The situation is historically accurate.
There were many such attempts and the film closely follows
the plot of the book. Written by John Vogel {jlvogel@comcast.net}
A British
assassin is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill
Charles de Gaulle while a dedicated gendarme follows the assassin's
trail in this political thriller. The film uses the perspectives
of the ultra-professional assassin as he prepares his work
and that of the harried but humble French detective as he
undercovers the plot. Written by Keith Loh {loh@sfu.ca}
When President
De Gaulle decides to grant independence to French Algeria,
several of the soldiers, who fought in that campaign, feel
that De Gaulle is belittling the lives of the men who died
there. So they form a group and make attempts at De Gaulle
and fail. When several of their key members are killed or
caught and eventually executed, the three top members decide
to hire a professional assassin to take out De Gaulle. The
man that they chose agrees to do it on the condition that
he be alllowed complete autonomy. He also advises them to
go into hiding until the job is done. And they do. When the
French Security force learns that they have shut themselves
off from the rest of world are curious what they are doing.
So they abduct their errand boy, and once interrogated all
he says is the assassin's code name, "The Jackal",
they hypothesize that they have hired an assassin to go after
DE Gaulle. Once De Gaulle is informed he refuses to alter
his plans and will not allow extra security added. So his
ministry decides that they should find the Jackal before he
makes his move. They appoint the best detective in France,
Claude Lebel to find him. Lebel plan is to contact every police
department in the world and see if the Jackal comes from their
country and if so to provide him with a description and/or
a photo. Now Scotland Yard has a small lead but unfortunately
they miss him but they have his passport so assuming that
he is out of the country, they try and find the passport that
he is using. Now when they think that they have him, he discards
the identity that he is using and assumes another one. Can
they find him before he gets De Gaulle? Written by rcs0411@yahoo.com
(See
here)
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Dissatisfied
with French President Charles de Gaulle's decision to give
independence to Algeria, the OAS, a militant french underground
organization, decides to assassinate De Gaulle, believing
they can restore the glory of France by killing De Gaulle.
The leader of the OAS, Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry botches the
attempt, and along with several other members of the plot,
end up being caught and executed. The remaining leadership
of the OAS, demoralized and having fled the country to escape
capture, realize that they cannot finish the job they have
started through their organization and have to hire a professional
assassin to do the job.
After
examining the dossiers of several candidates, they settle
on one man, who comes to visit them. He points out that they
have no choice about hiring a professional assassin, not only
is their organization riddled with police informants, but
their bungling has now made the job even more difficult because
De Gaulle's security has been dramatically enhanced due to
the attempt. He agrees to take the assignment provided they
pay half of his very large fee in advance, and comply with
several minor conditions. There will be no further contact
between the four men, other than they will set up a telephone
number in Paris he can call to get information. He will only
be known by his code name: The Jackal.
The movie
follows the methodical preparations the Jackal makes, including
the determination of how, when and where to perform the hit
(which is not disclosed to us), creation of a number of fake
identities and obtaining the resources to do the job, such
as a rifle modified to look like something else, and photographs
of himself as an old man. Despite being the title character,
in the movie the "Jackal" seems to talk the least
of all the characters; we understand his motivations and his
cunning brilliance by his actions. The violence also seems
very subdued; the additional killings The Jackal performs
in the process of covering his actions are brief and almost
invisible, or are performed off-screen.
Meanwhile,
French security forces, upset because of the sudden rash of
bank robberies in France, discover that they are being done
by members of the OAS, who do not know why they have been
ordered to do them. Realizing that the leadership of the OAS
are using the bank robberies to finance something, French
Security decides to detain their chief clerk: Adjutant Viktor
Wolenski. Rather than request Wolenski's extradition from
Austria, French Security decides to invoke self-help: they
kidnap him from Italy and smuggle him across the border into
France.
Torturing
Wolenski to death, French Security extracts enough information
to discover that there is quite possibly a plot on the life
of President De Gaulle by a foreign assassin whose code name
may be Jackal, and if that is the case, it represents a national
emergency. The Prime Minister convenes the entire cabinet,
and the head of the State Police admits there is no way they
can find this Jackal by normal means. They can't detain him
at the border; they don't know his name. "Action Service"
(the government's professional assassins) can't destroy him
if he's in another country: they don't know whom to destroy.
They can't arrest him if he's in the country; they don't know
who he is. They can't search for him, they don't know what
he looks like. Without a name and a face, they can do nothing
to stop him. In short, they need the best detective they can
find to put out a total effort to discover who The Jackal
is - and do it in secrecy - before he succeeds and plunges
France into a crisis.
The Police
Commissioner admits there is one man - one of his employees
- who can do the job: Deputy Commissioner Claude Lebel. Lebel
is told to drop everything, focus on finding The Jackal and
stopping him. He will have full powers and any resources he
needs, subject to just two requirements of the job: no publicity,
and do not fail. As in the novel, Deputy Commissioner Lebel
is given a seemingly impossible assignment. Lebel's assistant
Caron asks, "But no crime has been committed yet, so
where are we supposed to start looking for the criminal?",
to which Lebel answers, "We start by recognizing that,
after De Gaulle, we are the two most powerful people in France."
As the
Jackal has set up his methodical preparations to commit the
crime, Lebel also methodically prepares every method he can
devise to try to determine where The Jackal might be from,
how he might perform the act and when and where he will do
so. With assistance from the old boy network of police agencies
in other countries, they discover a lead by looking for British
subjects who have obtained passports as an adult using birth
certificates of deceased children, and find a dead child,
Paul Oliver Duggan, who applied for a passport decades after
he had died. British authorities also discover whom they suspect
The Jackal might be, Charles Calthrop, and realize that -
while it may be a coincidence - "Cha" in Charles
and "Cal" in Calthrop spell the French word for
Jackal.
The police
search the apartment belonging to Calthrop, and recover his
passport. Which brings up the question, if they have his passport,
what's he traveling on? French authorities are notified of
Calthrop's identity as Duggan, and will look for him. Lebel
discovers only a few hours too late that Duggan - The Jackal's
false identity - has already entered the country.
The Jackal
stops in a hotel, finds an attractive, bored married woman,
Madame Montpellier, whose husband is away on holiday, and
carries on a fling with her. He goes to her home (after secretly
discovering her address from the hotel register) to see her
for a few days. She mentions to him that the police were there,
asking questions about him, and she knows he stole the car
he has because it has local plates, but she's willing to protect
him if he'll tell her what he's doing. He kills her and escapes
out the window.
In the
mean time, Lebel discovers that there is an informant in their
midst: a telephone tap exposes that one of the members of
the cabinet has a mistress, and has been revealing the top-secret
details of their investigation to her in pillow talk. It turns
out that she was feeding the information to a contact that
The Jackal was calling. One of the members of the cabinet
is curious, how did Lebel know who's telephone to tap to find
out who the informant was. Lebel admits he didn't know, so
he had a tap placed on all of their telephones. Several of
the cabinet members are shocked.
The Jackal
disposes of Calthrop's identity, and substitutes that of a
Danish schoolteacher. He travels on to Paris. Meanwhile, the
police discover Madame Montpellier has been murdered, so now
Lebel no longer has to look for The Jackal in secrecy, police
can simply make a full public search for her murderer. They
discover that the Danish Schoolteacher, Per Lunquist, whose
passport was stolen, got on the Paris-bound train. They race
to the station only arriving a few minutes too late to prevent
The Jackal from escaping.
Lebel
realizes that they have only a few days to find the Jackal
because he realizes he will strike during a medals ceremony
at the next public holiday. Apparently dissatisfied at Lebel's
presumptiousness in tapping their phones, the cabinet dismisses
him with their thanks, saying they no longer need his help.
At a gay
bathhouse, The Jackal is approached by another man, who picks
him up. They go back to the man's apartment. Later the man
sees a TV in a shop without sound, recognizing the Jackal's
face but not knowing why. As he mentions this to The Jackal,
the TV in the apartment has a newsflash telling that Per Lunquist
is wanted for the murder of Madame Montpellier. The Jackal
kills the man off-screen in his kitchen, then calmly sits
down and watches the TV.
The Prime
minister recalls Lebel, realizing that despite having in excess
of 100,000 police and gendarmes looking for The Jackal, they
can't find him, he's disappeared and they need Lebel after
all.
On the
day of the celebration, The Jackal passes a gendarme who inspects
his papers. The Jackal has become a chameleon: by using certain
tricks, he has made himself look like an elderly amputee.
The Gendarme, seeing a one-legged old man on a crutch, lets
him pass. The Jackal goes into an apartment, kills the landlady,
unties his leg from behind his buttocks, goes into a top-floor
flat, and reveals to us that his crutch had a more sinister
purpose, as he disassembles it to produce the rifle which
was disguised as the crutch.
The Jackal
sets up his sniper's nest and aims his weapon at the spot
where De Gaulle will stand as he gives out medals at the procession.
He waits. Meanwhile, Lebel is continuing to circulate, trying
to figure from where The Jackal will strike. Lebel runs into
the gendarme who had met the disguised Jackal, and the two
of them run toward the apartment.
Meanwhile,
De Gaulle is presenting medals to war veterans, and The Jackal
has him in his sights. De Gaulle has stopped for a moment,
and is standing. The Jackal takes the shot.
De Gaulle
moves, and The Jackal misses the shot. As he attempts to reload,
Lebel and the gendarme bust down the door. The Jackal uses
his rifle to kill the gendarme. As he is attempting to again
reload, Lebel grabs the gendarme's machine gun, quickly figures
out how to use it, and before The Jackal can also kill him,
sprays a hail of bullets which tosses the body of The Jackal
across the wall of the room, dead. Lebel looks out the window
as the oblivious De Gaulle continues with the ceremony, unaware
of how close death came to him that day.
As British
police are looking over Calthrop's apartment, he walks in,
and demands to know who they are and what they are doing there.
So now we discover that the Charles Calthrop that they had
investigated was not The Jackal.
At the
end of the film, as we watch The Jackal's coffin being lowered
into the grave, we are left with the question: "Who the
hell was he?" (See
here)
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