The Jackal DVD

Dom Robinson reviews
The Jackal How do you stop an assassin
who has no identity? Distributed by

Columbia TriStar

• Cert:
• Cat.no: UDR 90127
• Running time: 120 minutes
• Year: 1997
• Pressing: 2001
• Region(s): 2, PAL
• Chapters: 31 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Languages: 3 languages available.
• Subtitles: 21 languages available.
• Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Panavision)
• 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 9
• Price: £19.99
• Extras: Trailer, Making of The Jackal, Production Notes, Cast and Filmmakers, Production Stills, Director’s Commentary
  

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  Director:

  Michael Caton-Jones

  (Doc Hollywood, The Jackal, Memphis Belle, Rob Roy, Scandal, This Boy’s Life)

Producers:

James Jacks, Sean Daniel, Michael Caton-Jones and Kevin Jarre

Screenplay

Chuck Pfarrer

Music:

Carter Burwell

Cast:

The Jackal: Bruce Willis
Declan Mulqueen: Richard Gere
Preston: Sidney Poitier
Valentina Koslova: Diane Venora
Isabella: Mathilda May
Lamont: Jack Black
Woolburton: Leslie Philips

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The Jackal is the 1990’s remake of the Edward Fox film, The Day Of The Jackal, updated with high-tech gadgetry and special effects. Bruce Willis is the Jackal – the greatest assassin in history, out to eliminate a top U.S. Government official. Declan Mulqueen (Richard Gere), an imprisoned underground operative, is – as it happens – the only man who can stop him. It’s up to Sidney Poitier to send a thief to catch a thief. All of this seems a bit bizarre because Gere’s character has killed a number of government bigwigs in the past and the Americans are effectively letting him out, albeit under their supervision, to stop another one more murder, at great cost to the U.S. taxpayer of course. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but this is a piece of flashy Hollywood fare where the rules don’t always apply.

Bruce Willis continues to be one of the best actors of his generation, playing many different roles throughout his career and doing similar throughout this film as he changes outfits a great number of times to ensure he always fits in but remains never to be recognised. On the other hand, Richard Gere piles on the Oirish accent way too thick to the point where it sounds incomprehensible and makes him sound ridiculous and Sidney Poitier is the FBI man who stumbles from scene to scene reciting lines from the script as if he doesn’t particularly care, but rolls his eyes around just enough to throw viewers off the scent. Diane Venora, as Major Valentina Koslova is worth a watch as the feisty Russian agent playing second-fiddle to Poitier.

Overall, although you know exactly how this film will end given Hollywood’s propensity for good to always triumph over evil – thus negating one line of the PAL laserdisc back cover’s sleeve notes: “..and a story that’s guaranteed to always keep you guessing” – there is a great deal of fun to be had watching Bruce carry out his deadly work.

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Bruce Willis does his best Ned Flanders:
“Yippee-diddly-kay-ay, Mother-diddly-fucker!”

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The picture is too dark on this DVD a lot of the time, even during outside daytime scenes (I had to enhance the picture above), which is bizarre because the 1998 PAL Laserdisc was perfectly fine, albeit non-anamorphic. At least this does have an anamorphic transfer. Framed at 2.35:1, the widescreen ratio is the only way to watch this film as the director utilises the frame to capture all the splendour of each city such as Moscow, Helsinki, Montreal, Washington D.C. and Virginia, not to mention the abundance of colours in chapter 19 during the brief Regatta boat race. The average bitrate is 6.58Mb/s, frequently closing in on 9Mb/s.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix is nothing short of excellent. Carter Burwell‘s magnificent score sets the pace of the film and draws the viewer in, while your speakers will get a big workout from a number of key scenes such as “The Real Test” (ch.17) – Bruce tests the big gattling gun for the first time with and without a moving target, “Witherspoon’s Mistake” (ch.21) – a radio is set to switch on automatically and LOUD to distract the friendly neighbourhood FBI folk and “The Jackal Strikes” (ch.26) – Bruce uses his aforementioned BFG to tear seven shades of you-know-what out of the local hospital in an attempt to assassinate the First Lady. Of course, if we had been treated to the DTS 5.1 sound mix which comes on a separate Region 1 DVD then that would be all the better. Dialogue is also available in Italian and Spanish, but both are surround sound-only.

The extras consist of several pages of Production Notes that you’ll read once only and a Cast and Filmmakers section for the major actors and director, listing the films in which they’ve been involved, but only up to 1997 when this film came out.

The Making of The Jackal appears to have a running time of 47 minutes, but is actually 24-minutes of ‘making of’, 14 minutes of deleted scenes some of which apparently came from the centre of the film and repeated things we’d already learned hence it was chopped, an alternate ending which isn’t a great deal different, a 2-minute Trailer in 4;3 fullscreen and a Production Stills section. Finally, the disc includes a feature-length director’s commentary from Michael Caton-Jones.

You can tell all of these extras from the second paragraph were taken directly from the NTSC laserdisc because of the headings between each section.

The film is copiously chaptered with 31 spread throughout the two hours and the menus are static, but the main one contains music from the score. The subtitles come in 13 languages – English, Danish, Finnish, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Bulgarian, Polish, Czech, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish and Hungarian.

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


OVERALL Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.