For the first few minutes of The Day of the Jackal, you wonder why they have bothered to pay the Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne at all. He is so well disguised as an older German man that it could be anybody buried under all those prosthetics. Yet soon enough, after much prancing around an office building – where he shoots anyone who gets in the way – we are finally treated to the unboxing of Redmayne, as he peels away the mask, the wig, the makeup and the contact lenses. The scene is impressive, chilling and just a little bit silly – a neat summary of how the drama itself will unfold.
This is an update of Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel, thrust into the modern world of international politics, espionage, the dark web and criminal underworlds. Redmayne is the Jackal, a shapeshifting assassin so competent he can accurately fire a sniper rifle and hit his target from a record-breaking distance – so far away that, at first, MI6 refuses to believe that it is possible. He is a ruthless killing machine, sparing no thought for the collateral damage to the passersby who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And yet, in this version, he is also a family man, keeping a big assassin-shaped secret from his wife and son. If the Jackal is typically elusive, this detail aims to flesh him out and make him more human.
