Two Thrillers on DVD - 'The Jackal' and 'The Pelican Brief'

 

1997 Film - 2003 DVD

I watched these two films within days of each other - The Jackal for the second or third time but a first viewing for The Pelican Brief. Before my own few comments, I thought I would look up what Roger Ebert  (1942-2013) - the best-known film critic in America - thought of them. I occasionally read his reviews when I was engaged in that marathon run of watching The 50 Great War Films, and found much to agree with but also times when I disagreed with him. He was a committed Democrat, shown perhaps when he criticised The Jackal for having as the target a First Lady clearly intended to be Hillary Rodham Clinton (hints: She is blond, 50ish, the wife of the president...) I would never wish anyone dead (well, Putin?) but Clinton has always been an anathema to me. Ebert is not a fan of either film, and is particularly scathing of The Jackal.

Richard Gere, Sidney Poitier and Diane Venora

The Jackal is what is called a loose take on the 1973 movie The Day of the Jackal - it was a commercial success, grossing $159.3 million worldwide against a $50 million budget. However, the film earned mostly negative reviews and Ebert did not hold back on his criticisms. "The Jackal" is a glum, curiously flat thriller about a man who goes to a great deal of trouble in order to create a crime that anyone in the audience could commit more quickly and efficiently...[the film] impressed me with its absurdity. There was scarcely a second I could take seriously. Examples: In Washington, D.C., subway system, the Jackal jumps across the tracks in front of a train, to elude his pursuers. The train stops, exchanges passengers and pulls out of the station. Is it just possible, do you suppose, that in real life after a man jumps across the tracks, the train halts until the situation is sorted out?...Or, how about the scene early in the film where a fight breaks out on cue, and then stops immediately after a gunshot is fired?...these barflies are as choreographed as dancing Cossacks....a Russian-born agent named Valentina (Diane Venora), whose character trait (singular) is that she lights a cigarette every time she is not already smoking one... 

Bruce Willis as 'The Jackal'

The Jackal strikes me as the kind of overachiever who, assigned to kill a mosquito, would purchase contraband insecticides from Iraq and bring them into the United States by hot air balloon, distilling his drinking water from clouds and shooting birds for food. Ouch! Ebert won't be on the director's Christmas card list. However, he does have a point. I couldn't see why Valentina had to shout to Richard Gere when the Jackal already had him in his gun sights or why she and two Secret Service agents hung about at the lonely house well after the occupants had been whisked away by the FBI. Gere's Irish accent was interesting and his calm, thoughtful demeanor didn't really fit an IRA gunman persona. Enough said. Where I do agree with Ebert is on his comment about The Day of the Jackal - that was a film that impressed us with the depth of its expertise. We felt it knew exactly what it was talking about. That assassin seemed 'real', this one more manufactured. That is why the earlier film is in my top 20 films, whereas this one is very much an also-ran. De Gaulle was a real-life target of the O.A.S., subject to more than one attempt on his life for genuine 'political' reasons. The fictitious First Lady was simply the target of a crazed mafiosi-type Russian bleating for revenge for his brother's death. 

1993 Film - 2011 DVD

Denzel Washington & Julia Roberts

Roger Ebert has a very interesting comparison between the two films from John Grisham books - The Pelican Brief and The Firm. While the latter was a muscular thriller with action sequences, The Pelican Brief takes place more quietly, in corners, shadows, and secret hotel rooms. True, it has a few bomb explosions and chases, but by Grisham standards it's claustrophobic...by casting attractive stars in the leads, by finding the right visual look, by underlining the action with brooding, ominously sad music, a good director can create the illusion of meaning even when there's nothing there. Washington and Roberts do the rest, simply by embodying virtue and being likable. 

Perhaps that's why I found the movie bordered on being boring! Washington, in his early pictures at least, is the wholesome 'good guy' - I much preferred him in The Equalizer (2014); Roberts too often comes across as a wide row of teeth with not a lot of depth behind them. Unfair? Probably, but I didn't buy the Ebert summary of Roberts being a wonderful heroine - warm, courageous, very beautiful. Beauty is irrelevant to this story. In 2010, Roberts said she was Hindu, having converted for spiritual satisfaction - well, whatever floats your boat I suppose.

I briefly thought that the President in the movie - played by a rather bland, smiling Robert Culp but who was clearly guilty of nefarious practices - couldn't possibly have attained the highest office. Then I recalled George Walker Bush, William Jefferson Clinton and Donald John Trump, and realised Culp's portrayal was spot on.