PLOT: An unrivaled and highly elusive lone assassin, the Jackal, makes his living carrying out hits for the highest fee. But following his latest kill, he meets his match in a tenacious British intelligence officer who starts to track down the Jackal in a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase across Europe, leaving destruction in its wake.
REVIEW: The Day of the Jackal is a title that resonates even if you have not seen the 1973 film or the novel it was based on. Loosely remade in 1997 as The Jackal, starring Bruce Willis and Richard Gere, the core plot of the Frederick Forsyth novel followed a master assassin attempting to kill the President of France and the investigation to stop him. While the original film was a critical and box office success, the dated subject matter has been ripe for a contemporary update. The new Sky/Peacock limited series The Day of the Jackal dramatically changes the plot and characters while keeping the core cat-and-mouse dynamic between the titular killer and the agent tasked with hunting him down. The new iteration of the story takes a deeper look at the parallels between the hunter and the hunted to deliver a psychologically complex portrait of two people on opposite sides with masterful performances from Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.
Updating the story from 1960s France to modern-day Europe, The Day of the Jackal centers on the assassin (Eddie Redmayne) as he expertly undertakes a job involving disguises, complex choreographed sniper skills, and a perfectly timed escape. Redmayne portrays The Jackal as a natural mimic who balances his professional life with a secret family, including a young son and a wife, Nuria (Ursula Corbero). While The Jackal ties up loose ends on the job that opens the series, he is recruited for a new target by a wealthy cabal looking to take out a high-profile adversary. As The Jackal balances his carefully curated dual lives, his recent kill has resulted in a multinational hunt for his whereabouts despite no one knowing who or where he is. That is despite the single-minded focus of MI-6 agent Bianca (Lashana Lynch), who has made it her responsibility to find The Jackal and bring him to justice.
The ten-episode series has a propulsive start as we become intimately informed about how The Jackal operates. Eddie Redmayne has played nuanced characters before, but I cannot recall his role with this level of duality or sociopathy. There is a charming, James Bond-like quality to The Jackal but there is also an undercurrent that makes you question whether you should like him a an individual. He is talented and calculating, and when we see him disarmed as a family man, he can be likable, but we never forget he is a murderer. Redmayne adopts The Jackal’s chameleon-like ability to change his appearance, voice, and demeanor, making him even more frightening. However, the perspective of this series also shows the motivations behind why he does what he does, which offers more humanity to the performance than we saw in the previous adaptations of the novel. Redmayne keeps you invested in The Jackal as both a villain and an antihero for the duration of the series, even when he must make difficult choices in the final episodes.
While the two storylines do not directly converge for several episodes, the parallels between The Jackal and Bianca’s arc are numerous. Lashana Lynch has already shown she has the chops to play a spy in No Time To Die as well as a superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but her turn as the single-minded agent using her brains and cunning to track down a killer is one of the actor’s most impressive turns to date. Bianca, like The Jackal, drops her personal life at a moment’s notice when she is called by her superiors, including Osita Halcrow (Chukwudi Iwuji) and Isabel Kirby (Lia Williams) as she tries to foil another death, this time of entrepreneur Ulle Dag Charles (Khalid Abdalla). Bianca risks disappointing her daughter and husband, but it is in the service of the greater good that puts her and The Jackal on a collision course, which the series continually amps up through each successive chapter. Had the series only focused on Bianca and not The Jackal, this series would have remained a stunning showcase for Lashana Lynch. The limited screen time shared between Redmayne and Lynch allows each character to develop fully without relying on the other.
Brian Kirk, Anthony Philipson, Paul Wilmshurst, and Anu Menon directed the ten-episode series, which Ronan Bennett scripted. Bennett, a novelist and writer, is best known for the BBC historical limited series Gunpowder and Michael Mann’s 2009 biopic Public Enemies. At times, the series feels like two different shows following shared arcs with the supporting players, including Charles Dance, Eleanor Matsuura, Richard Dormer, and Kate Dickie, existing in one and not the other. Alongside the standout leads, Ursula Corbero is fantastic and continues to make me wonder why she is not leading more projects like this. My only complaint, without divulging any spoilers, is how the series wraps up the finale. In many ways, it works within the context of how the story unfolds, but I could not help feeling a bit underwhelmed at the lack of a more conclusive ending.
From the Bond-esque opening credits complete with a sultry title song to the balance of character development, political intrigue, and realistic stakes, The Day of the Jackal is at once indebted to the 007 franchise and its antithesis. This grounded, realistic thriller takes time to develop the protagonist and antagonist while leaving audiences wondering which side they trust and whether they should or should not. This is not a clean-cut espionage story or even an action-oriented tale. The Day of the Jackal is a worthy modernization of the classic novel and delivers two of the year’s better performances on film or the small screen. Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch are absolutely fantastic and somewhat eclipse the minor shortcomings of the project itself. If you come into this series expecting it to be like Mission: Impossible or The Bourne Identity, you will be disappointed, but if you are a fan of Slow Horses and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, you are in for a treat.
The Day of the Jackal premieres on November 7th on Peacock.