THE JACKAL (1997) ** Casting Richard Gere and Bruce Willis in the same film is inspired lunacy, like whoever invented discord. Suave, occasionally brilliant Gere wouldn't appear to have a lot of common ground with overly enthusiastic (dog-like), funky Willis, and the possibility of harmonious counterpoint would seem remote. But they'd need the proper stage, and this definitely isn't it. You begin to pick up on the possibility of some problem when the credits inform you that the film is based on some unoriginally entitled screenplay called "The Day of the Jackal," rather than on an update of Frederick Forsythe's novel. Ok, but maybe he just wanted to sit around in the Conservative hauteur of some luridly refurbished country estate, and have nothing to do with the vulgarity of Hollywood, and particularly its arrant embodiment in Willis. No, it quickly becomes clear that the plot here doesn't bear anything resembling scrutiny, and that Forsythe would have never let it pass. Gere's appeared more interested in other roles, and Willis has been tougher, but much of the film is passable anyway. Michael Caton-Jones gives you a decent sense of the haughty grandeur and technological elegance of national security and the pinnacle of international terrorism. Then the entire thing just falls apart. Sidney Poitier plays down to his surroundings by pretending to be a pathologically honest FBI agent. Right, that's what they're known for. Any semblance of a credible plot is entirely thrown out the window (the cops are looking for a loner on a sailboat, Willis is the only one, they wave at him; on his way to his big hit Willis decides to hit a peripheral character whom he knows to be under police protection, just to piss Gere off; etc., etc.) and replaced by a succession of ridiculous scenes, any which one of which would have been enough to sink a legitimate thriller. We are eventually expected to believe that only an ex-terrorist can stop a terrorist. So it's insulting to policemen, it's insulting to Forsythe, it's insulting to Carlos the Jackal, and, frankly, it's insulting to brighter hyenas, as well.
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