Aside from the boring dialogue, crappy acting, and lousy script, this was a real thriller. (Ha.) Geez, what a waste of time it was. And I watched it thinking I was willing to waste a bit of time, as I had a cold & wanted an easy, non-thinking, non-demanding flick to watch. Even so, I regretted watching this one. As bad as Richard Gere was (not that he had much of a role to work it), poor Sidney Poitier was even worse, and Bruce Willis really must win some award for "most cliched acting of the year, if not decade". My point is: Don't waste your time with this flick. Watch a rerun of a conventional TV cop show instead; at least you want feel disappointed (and you'll waste less time!).

The Jackal (1997): Dir: Michael Caton-Jones / Cast: Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, Sidney Poitier, Diane Venora, Jack Black: Remake of Day of the Jackal that gets reduced to formula and a game of cat and mouse. Bruce Willis stars as the Jackal, an assassin whose disguises mainly consist of wigs but his methods are savage. The C.I.A enlist a criminal played by Richard Gere to help track down Willis. Graphic violence becomes the norm including a scene where someone's arm is blown off. It is obvious the Gere and Willis will meet and have a violent confrontation that will solve absolutely nothing. Director Michael Caton-Jones handles the action but the production is nothing marvelous. Willis and Gere have little screen time together and when they are within the same general location it is indicated with a really lame glare via Willis as if he senses Gere's presence. Willis also phones up some homosexual guy whom he shoots dead for no reason. Also wasting time is Sidney Poitier and Diane Venora who hopefully didn't get their hopes up on this film actually turning out good. Jack Black appears to supply Willis with arms only to have his arm blown off before being finished off with a second blast. This sort of junk has been done countless times but for the two leads it will hopefully lead to a better film to embark upon in the future. The screenplay has more bark than bite. Score: 1 / 10

Original film had an intelligent story line, and suspense, with brilliant acting. Only decent actors in this were Richard Gere and Sidney, even though Gere's character seemed to be propaganda for a terrorist organisation. Remember how president Bush said if any person in any country has anything to do with terrorism in any form, and that country doesn't act against those people, then the whole country is against the USA? That part of the film shows how hypocritical the USA was before 9/11.Apart from that, Bruce ran around shooting like one of his mindless action characters in other films. I actually got bored half way through and turned over for a while because it seemed to lose all form of storyline, until deciding to give it another chance to watch the rest. Reenactment of the original film scene where he was pretending to be gay to hide out at another gay man's house became a little better, but it didn't improve much.Then I read a review on here about how another person approached it as a parody, which made it actually funny and I could see their point.

Yeah, I know, it is so easy to bash this film as so many of you have done.It's a thriller that doesn't stand out in it's genre, pretty easy to watch but not more than that. It has a high profile cast including Bruce Willis, Richard Gere and a couple of very very decent actors slash actresses like J.K. Simmons, Diane Venora and so on, so nothing wrong with that. A more than decent director in Michael Caton-Jones, who does his best with the material he's got and doing a good job at it. Sadly he has to work with a script that has potholes the size of Hummers H3 in it, so it's easy to see why this film doesn't work the way it's supposed to.but!!!! If you have read some of the novels written by Robert Ludlum (may God rest his soul) you will have picked up some of the vibe he has put in most of his novels, putting the Jason Bourne Trilogy upfront. And just to be clear about it, I'm not talking about the miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain and also not even mentioning the Matt Damon movies (although those were really cool) but the original novels as Mr. Ludlum intended them to be. If you have these novels in the back of your head and are a fan of them you will find this movie pretty enjoyable to watch although the execution of this movie has some problems in staying believable.It is in general a pretty normal thriller with (Í'm sorry to say) some mayor flaws. But I can't escape the feeling that the script (allthough adapted from an apparent classic of which I haven't yet had the pleasure of watching) was written in the mindset of an all-out genius Robert Ludlum-vibe, which I picked up on immediately and enjoyed very much.