15 Underrated Movie Remakes That Deserve Another Look

Michael Caton-Jones’ The Jackal adapts the 1973 film The Day of the Jackal, itself based on the 1971 novel by Frederick Forsyth, and stars Bruce Willis, Richard Gere and Sidney Poitier in an action-thriller conspiracy plot that failed to ensnare the critics.

Willis star as the titular hitman, a ruthless ex-KGB asset who has been hired to assassinate the US First Lady for $70 million. Richard Gere is Declan Joseph Mulqueen, an ex-IRA sniper whom the feds believe can foil the plot. Carnage ensues. Now, people didn’t really like it when compared to the 1973 film, and it does have its flaws - Gere’s accent, for example, is shocking; and if you boil it down, the plot is effectively the same as every Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum adaptation.

But, contrary to most assassin movies, which either pitch from the side of the killer or have them crop up every now and again as a fly in the ointment to keep the plot moving, The Jackal wedges us somewhere in-between, and as a result is genuinely exhilarating. When it becomes apparent there is a) nothing the Jackal won’t do, and b) maybe nothing that can be done to stop him, is when the film is at its best. It’s as much ‘90s zeitgeist as Leon or Fight Club, and every scene involving the Jackal’s long-range heavy machine gun deserves its place in the action canon.