Writing a screenplay for a thriller is hard. Harder than pouring concrete under the Texas sun. Harder than building a bridge over troubled waters. And incidentally, a whole heck of a lot harder than writing a movie review.
Thrillers are all variations on a theme. You have a smart, resourceful, and powerful Bad Guy, who has a goal he has to meet. You have a noble and brave Good Guy, who has to protect the innocent, kill the Bad Guy, and not get killed himself in the process. The trick of thriller writing is doing all of this in an interesting and novel manner. This simple formula can lead to classic movies like North by Northwest, High Noon, or Silence of the Lambs, or big summer blockbusters like Men In Black, The Fugitive, or Air Force One, or it can lead to utter dreck like Masterminds, Event Horizon, Kull the Conqueror.... is anyone else getting depressed here?
Point is, it's not enough to follow the formula. You've got to throw in something extra, something good and new and better than the last version. Something to surprise and move all of us people who buy the tickets and the popcorn and the Happy Meals. This is a hard thing to do, but it is absolutely necessary in every way. Without that something extra -- whether it's a great plot or a well-written screenplay, or great special effects or great locations or great casting or great performances or great big hungry dinosaurs -- the movie fails. That's why The Jackal, with all its starpower, with all its budget, with all its hype, gets a big fat F.
Bruce Willis is the Bad Guy, the Jackal, a legendary killer for hire. Richard Gere is the Good Guy, a former IRA assassin with a vendetta against the Jackal. The Jackal is trying to kill someone. Gere is trying to stop him. Will Gere be able to stop the assassination in time and kill the Jackal? (I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count.) There are no surprises awaiting the audience in The Jackal, no moment when you say to yourself, "I wonder what happens next?"
The script for the Jackal isn't ripped straight from today's headlines. It's ripped off, straight from an episode of Millennium. Throughout the movie, we learn what the Jackal's plans are and how he intends to accomplish them. No surprise. The fun of a movie like this should come from Richard Gere figuring out what the Jackal's plan is and developing a clever plan to foil the Bad Guy. Instead, we get two (count 'em, two) scenes where Gere is sitting in an FBI conference room somewhere and instantly divines the Jackal's plan just as if he's Frank Black (or more likely, just as if he's been handed a copy of the script). And we never get more than a superficial clue as to why Gere has had this flash of insight. It's like Gere's character is psychic, but neither he nor the FBI (or the screenwriters) seem to know it. And just like in Millennium, the Bad Guy has an overwhelming need to go after the people the Good Guy cares about, whether or not they are important to what he's trying to do or not. What's more, in the last half of the movie, the Jackal, supposedly a super-smart professional terrorist who never makes a mistake, comes down with a major case of the stupids.
As for the performances... Bruce Willis manages to get through the whole movie without a wisecrack, which is a major achievement, but not enough reason to see the movie. His disguises are good, but not as good or as interesting as Val Kilmer's in The Saint. Richard Gere is made to talk the entire movie in an Irish accent, which detracts from his otherwise lifeless and dull performance. Sidney Poitier is probably the most disappointing element in a overwhelmingly disappointing movie -- not that his performance is bad or anything, it's not, but it is sad that Hollywood won't use this talented actor in any part other than an FBI agent (Shoot to Kill, Sneakers).
Writing a good plot and a good screenplay, like I said, is hard, but it can be done. It wasn't done here. It is our job as consumers to reward good screenplays and to denounce bad and uninteresting ones. Do not go see this movie. You'll only encourage the producers to make more just like it. Instead, stay home and rent Day of the Jackal, or In the Line of Fire, or a fire safety video, for crying out loud. Anything other than The Jackal, which lives up to its name by gnawing the dead bones of other, better movies.
Grade: F
-- Curtis Edmonds blueduck@hsbr.org
The Hollywood Stock Brokerage and Resource Your Guide to the Hollywood Stock Exchange http://www.hsbr.org/brokers/blueduck/
"Are you kidding? No jury in the world would convict a baby for murder. Well, maybe Texas."
-- Chief Clancy Wiggum
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