Review of “The Day of the Jackal” – a thriller in the style of “cat and mouse” cannot be exciting

I fully admit that I have never even heard of Day of the Jackal Until I knew that I would have to write this review. I have virtually no experience with either the original 1971 novel by Frederick Forsyth (who also produced it) or its 1973 film adaptation starring Edward Fox; so I can’t speak to how this series compares to any of them.

What I can say is that the series’ central plot of a lone assassin being pursued by a seasoned intelligence officer is strong in its own right, especially with talented actors like Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch in the lead roles. I can also say that the show they made does not live up to that potential in any way.

What’s happened Day of the Jackal O?

Day of the Jackal focuses on two main parallel storylines. The Jackal, played by Eddie Redmayne, is an elusive assassin who makes his living taking out high-profile targets on the orders of the highest bidder. After a particularly impressive murder, an anonymous client approaches the Jackal with an incredibly risky assignment, but one with such good payoffs that he will never have to work again.

However, things aren’t quite so simple with the Jackal because of our other main character, Bianca, played by Lashana Lynch. She is an MI6 weapons specialist who recognizes the Jackal’s unique equipment and uses it as a starting point to unravel the mystery and conspiracy of his true identity. With both leads ticking to complete the job, the Jackal works harder than ever to destroy his target while Bianca relentlessly pursues him across Europe in a life-and-death game of cat and mouse.

How are you Day of the Jackal?

The biggest problem with Day of the Jackal it’s his pace. This type of thriller should feel fast-paced and exciting as we move quickly from place to place, watching two opponents go toe-to-toe. But while that variety of locations is certainly present, the end result of stretching the story out of a two-hour film into a ten-episode series is that it often feels like it’s spinning around waiting for good moments. And that’s before you even get to how filled each episode is with extraneous plots centered on unimportant and downright uninteresting side characters whose storylines barely connect to the main plot, if at all.

Moreover, the two main plots seem too separated to develop a meaningful adversarial relationship. Much of the thrill in such stories comes from seeing the protagonist and antagonist compete with each other, often developing a more personal rivalry and a strange sense of respect for each other. Think Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty, or even Batman and the Joker. But here Bianca and Jackal almost never communicate with each other.

For the most part, the Jackal’s relationship with Bianca begins and ends with them seeing her as another obstacle to overcome, and the rest of his story is simply him doing whatever it takes to complete his job as an assassin. In Bianca’s story, the Jackal is just another killer she needs to stop. Again, this is nothing more than a job for her or the Jackal. These two don’t really have or have any personal fights and it feels like a missed opportunity.

To be fair, Bianca and Jackal’s solo storylines do try to create more personal stakes for them. The Jackal has a surprisingly detailed backstory that the series deepens as it progresses, and Bianca’s storyline gives us a glimpse into her personal life and the psychological toll her job takes on both her and those around her. But even then, by the end, I still felt like I barely knew who these people were, other than their jobs and a few personal relationships that weren’t particularly deep.

Part of this may come back to another important issue with Day of the Jackal: This is thematically and politically toothless. For all the marketing talk about updating and reimagining the story for the modern political landscape, the series rarely takes advantage of this and often seems to be actively afraid of it, with the exception of welcome diversity in the cast.

The scene where Bianca has to bring someone from a “radical left protest” doesn’t make it clear what they’re protesting against, why they’re protesting, or whether Bianca thinks the protest is justified. The Jackal’s targets are often politicians and tech billionaires, but the series doesn’t say what these politicians and billionaires believed in or were trying to achieve beyond “good things” in a general sense. This is a show built on political themes and imagery that is too cowardly for any character to take a significant political stance on literally anything.

Is Day of the Jackal is it worth watching?

Day of the Jackal this is a series with good performances from a great cast, good cinematography and action scenes, and a great narrative plot that squanders that potential on a dull and lifeless story that drags out key plot points for too long, can’t commit to the theme, and doesn’t seem to can give its characters some depth, nuance, or even something to do that goes beyond the basic requirements of the plot.

I don’t like being so negative at all. I wish I liked it more because I respect what everyone was trying to do and I think these two main characters in particular are really great, both in general and in this series specifically. Lashana Lynch in particular is someone who I feel Hollywood underestimates in the crime department, and it’s great to see her shine in such a leading role. I just wish this lead had been on a better show than Day of the Jackal.

Day of the Jackal It premieres on Peacock on November 14th. All ten episodes reviewed.