The Day of the Jackal review: Even Eddie Redmayne can’t elevate this empty adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s assassin thriller

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Eddie Redmayne in a still from The Day of the Jackal.

Nevertheless, UDC — that’s what members of his cult address him as — appears to have annoyed the one-percent. Think of him as the Alexander Skarsgard character from Succession, committed to messing with the Roys. Updating a book as beloved as The Day of the Jackal could’ve opened up a world of possibilities. But the show routinely finds itself returning to familiar narrative ground; instead of investigating corruption at the highest levels of business, The Day of the Jackal uses billionaires and tech entrepreneurs as little more than anonymous pawns. And unlike the central character in David Fincher’s The Killer, the Jackal in the show isn’t an ideologically bereft mercenary.

As played by Redmayne, he’s clearly someone who can be swayed by the dangling carrot of cash money. Perhaps in an effort to make him less icy than he was in the book, the show shoehorns in an unnecessary subplot involving his wife, Nuria, and an infant son. It’s a bit toothless of the series to project the Jackal as a family man leading a double life. Ideally, this approach could’ve worked had they devoted at least a few scenes to the Jackal behaving a regular person, sort of like M Night Shyamalan did in his latest film, Trap. Only to throw us off. But even at home, he can hardly take his mind off ‘work’. It would’ve been far more courageous of Bennett to force the audience to care about a stone-cold killer. For similar reasons, the person snapping at his heels is designed to be morally dubious, thereby preventing us from rooting for them too hard.

Played by Bond breakout Lashana Lynch, MI6 agent Bianca Pullman is perhaps one of the most inept intelligence officers ever put on the small screen. And it’s not like her superiors don’t recognise this. On several occasions, her boss lists out the many mistakes that Bianca has made in her investigation — among her biggest crimes is getting an innocent young girl killed — but for entirely contrived reasons, she is allowed to continue. Like the Jackal, Bianca is given a personal subplot as well. This one doesn’t quite work either. Had Bianca been a more interesting character, perhaps her domestic disputes would’ve been more dramatic. But she’s gratingly one-note.

It helps that Redmayne is less restrained by the writing. And although the show wastes a considerable amount of time on his sham of a marriage — his wife is played by Úrsula Corberó — it also gives the Jackal plenty of opportunity to flex his skills. The chase takes him all across Europe, giving the show the look and feel of an expensive Discovery Channel travelogue. But everything is stretched beyond belief. For instance, Bianca’s efforts to nab a rogue gunmaker — she believes he can lead her to the Jackal — lasts seven full episodes. A sleeker show would’ve gotten this out of the way in the first hour, and then busied itself with something more exciting.

A tenacious British intelligence officer (Lashana Lynch) tracks down the Jackal in a
thrilling cat-and-mouse chase across Europe.

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A couple of stakeouts are interestingly staged, but the whole subplot involving a mole in British intelligence, and another that revolves around a grieving father, is about as dull as the Jackal’s personal track. What made both the book and the original film so successful was the lean story at their core. There was barely any dialogue. The atmosphere was tense throughout. By getting distracted with alarming regularity, the show keeps puncturing holes in its own abdomen. The Day of the Jackal feels like a month.

The Day of the Jackal
Creator – Ronan Bennett
Cast – Eddie Redmayne, Lashana Lynch, Úrsula Corberó, Chukwudi Iwuji, Kate Dickie, Khalid Abdalla
Rating – 2.5/5