Review of Day Of The Jackal

Introduction

Edward Fox plays the quentessential Englishman in the iadption of Frederick Forsyths novel.

Fox plays the Jackal, a hit man going for one last hit, the so called big one.

We are taken on a journey that traces the Jackals preparations whilst concurrently seeing how the police and particularly the officer in charge of the search, try everything to track him down in time.

Boundaries are pushed and lead upon lead followed up as the police close in on their man.

Will the Jackal succeed or will the authorities finally break the code? In 2 and a half hourse you`ll find out.

Video

Initially the image appears to be quite soft and grainy, but one look at the trailer accompanying the main feature will show what a superb job has been made of cleaning up the print.

The majority of the noise has been removed and the colours have been touched up excellently.

The 1.85:1 non-anamorphic transfer is bright and detailed in most places but at times does lose some definition, especially in parts of the film where darker light has been used. Compare the scene of the Jackal approaching the gun-makers house, (chapter 4) and when he is test firing the weapon (chapter 8) for examples.

Audio

It would appear that no work has been done to improve the audio in the same way as the video, but this does not unduly detract from the overall effect.

A 2 channel mono soundtrack copes well with the action on screen obviously without the impact of a full 5.1 effort, but still quite acceptable for a film of this vintage.

Features

A theatrical trailer and a set of production ntes / cast and filmmakers bios make up the extras on this disc.

The meus are static and nothing to write home about.

The trailer is worth a view just to see how they used to do it. It is longer than a modern example and personally I think is better for it. Also, it shows how well the main features transfer has been cleaned up.

Conclusion

This is a long film at 2 hours 23 minutes, but doesn`t drag. Edward Fox gives an outstanding performance as does the French detective who I can`t help but compare to Peter Sellars Clouseau and vice versa.

The film has been cleaned up nicely and it is also nicely shot with an air of relaxation and space that is sometimes missing from modern features.

Overall excellent with the disc only being let down by the lack of extras.