The Jackal

Based on 1973’s The Day of the Jackal, The Jackal follows FBI agent Carter Preston (Sidney Poitier) as he reluctantly enlists a jailed terrorist (Richard Gere’s Declan Mulqueen) to help track down and stop a vicious assassin (Bruce Willis’ title character) before he kills a high-ranking official. Filmmaker Michael Caton-Jones has infused The Jackal with an often frustratingly deliberate pace that’s especially problematic during the sluggish first half, as the narrative suffers from a fairly repetitive quality stemming from an ongoing emphasis on Willis and Gere’s respective characters’ exploits (ie there are plenty of sequences in which the Jackal adopts a new disguise and heads to a new locale, while Mulqueen and company attempt to catch up to him). The less-than-engrossing vibe is, at least, tempered by the effectiveness of the three leads’ work and a smattering of compelling sequences (eg Willis’ character tests out his monstrous weapon on Jack Black’s hapless Lamont), while Caton-Jones admittedly does a strong job of ramping up the tension in the buildup to (and execution of) the movie’s slightly padded-out climactic stretch. The end result is a passable endeavor that probably should’ve topped out at around 90 minutes, which is too bad, really, given the potential afforded by the premise and the talent for a top-notch thriller.

**1/2 out of ****