Film Portrayals
- The book was quickly adapted into the 1973 movie The Day of the Jackal with Edward Fox in the title role. Though initially a box office failure, it garnered mostly positive reviews and is today widely popular with critics.
- In the 1997 film remake The Jackal, the Jackal was played by Bruce Willis. In the remake, he is hired by an Azerbaijani mobster to assassinate the First Lady of the United States, and is pursued by the FBI and a former IRA sniper with a vendetta against him. This version of the character is substantially different from that featured in the novel and the 1973 film; in this film, he is portrayed as a sociopath, and it is implied that he takes pleasure in killing.
Read more about this topic: Jackal (The Day Of The Jackal)
Famous quotes containing the words film and/or portrayals:
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)
“We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)