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| “ | If you see Declan before you die, you tell him that he can't protect his women. | „ |
| ~ The Jackal, taunting Valentina Koslova as she dies. |
| “ | There is no man in the world who is proof against an assassin’s bullet. De Gaulle’s exposure rate is very high. Of course it’s possible to kill him. The point is that the chances of escape would not be too high. A fanatic prepared to die himself in the attempt is always the most certain method of eliminating a dictator who exposes himself to the public. I notice that despite your idealism you have not yet been able to produce such a man. Both Pont-de-Seine and Petit-Clamart failed because no one was prepared to risk his own life to make absolutely certain. | „ |
| ~ The Jackal to Marc Rodin, Andre Casson and Rene Montclair. |
The Jackal is the titular main antagonist in the 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal, its 1973 film adaptation of the same name, its 1997 remake The Jackal and the upcoming 2024 adaptation television series of the same name. He is an assassin for hire with a fearsome reputation in the criminal underworld.
He was portrayed by Edward Fox in the 1973 film and Bruce Willis, who also portrayed Muddy Grimes in Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, Lt. Muldoon in Planet Terror, himself in the music video for the Gorillaz song Stylo and Old Joe in Looper, in the 1997 film. He will be portrayed by Eddie Redmayne, who also played Osmund in Black Death, Alex Forbes in Like Minds, Balem Abrasax in Jupiter Ascending, and Charles Cullen in The Good Nurse, in the 2024 series.
Biography[]
Novel and 1973 film[]
The novel and 1973 film adaptation characterize the Jackal as an Englishman in his early 30s who has been linked to the assassinations of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba IN 1961. Just Prior to the DeGualle contract he had killed in Egypt two German engineers who were part of Nassar's anti Israel rocket program. According to his abilities and skills, the Jackal most likely was British Army sniper with combat experience (apparently in Malayan Emergency) and then he could work for MI6 for a while. Shortly before becoming a hitman, he was a mercenary in Congo Crisis.
The Jackal is hired by a far-right French terrorist group, the OAS (Organisation armée secrète, lit. "Secret Army Organisation") to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle, who the OAS believe is a traitor because of his decision to grant independence to Algeria. He demands a total of US$500,000, as he will need to retire after the job is done in order to hide from the French government. The assassin invents the codename of the Jackal ('Chacal' in French) after he is hired. When asked for his choice of code name in the novel, the Jackal replies: "Since we have been speaking of hunting, what about the Jackal? Will that do?". To pay the Jackal's fee, the OSA hires thugs to rob several banks and money trucks.
Taking elaborate precautions, the Jackal acquires a fake passport to get into France and forges identity documents to get him close to de Gaulle. He later commissions a special sniper rifle, a slender gun capable of being disassembled for smuggling into a secure area, and a supply of explosive-tipped mercury bullets, from a master gunsmith. He also steals two passports as contingent identities and purchases disguises to match. He kills the forger when the latter tries to blackmail him, then locks the body in a case. The French secret service learns of the assassination plot after capturing and interrogating a bodyguard employed by Colonel Marc Rodin, the brains of the operation. Although the bodyguard only knows of the codename 'Jackal' and the general intention about the plot, there is nothing more the French know. The French authorities put police detective Claude Lebel in charge of the investigation, tasking him with discovering the Jackal's real name and apprehending him.
Using OAS agent "Valmy" as a cut-out, the Jackal is kept fully informed of the French police's pursuit of him. On two occasions when the police get too close, he hides out with a wealthy woman he has seduced and a gay man he meets in a bathhouse, respectively. He kills both of them the woman because she discovered he was an assasian and the man when he remarked when he saw that his guest resembed a wanted notice for woman's murder.
Finally, on Liberation Day, 25 August 1963, the Jackal tries to snipe General de Gaulle with the custom rifle that he had smuggled into an apartment adjacent to a courtyard where the ceremony would take place, concealing the parts of the rifle within a set of crutches. However, the French president unexpectedly moves his head at the last moment, causing the Jackal to miss. As the Jackal prepares for a second shot, he is discovered by Lebel, who has tracked him there. The killer shoots a police officer who accompanies Lebel but, as he scrambles to reload his rifle, Lebel grabs a sub-machine gun from the dead policeman and kills the assassin. The Jackal is buried two days later in an unmarked grave; only Lebel attends, anonymously. The death certificate identifies him as "an unknown foreign tourist, killed in a car accident". In a twist ending the British discover that a suspect Charles Calthrop is both alive and is not the Jackel; they were mislead by the fact that jackel in french {Cha-cal) were the same 3 letters as Cathrop name; at the end of the novel there is the unanswered question: :If the Jackel wasnt Calthrop, then who the hell was he?
1997 film[]
The 1997 film The Jackal substantially revises the character; in this version, he is an American feared underworld assassin hired by Terek Murad, an Azerbaijani mobster, to kill the First Lady of the United States in retaliation of the death of his brother, Ghazzi, during a joint FBI-MVD operation. The Jackal charges $70 million, half up front and half on completion, for the hit, as he will need to disappear forever afterwards to hide from the police and the U.S. government.
In order to find the Jackal, the FBI recruits an Irish Republican Army sniper named Declan Mulqueen, the Jackal's nemesis. Mulqueen had once had a relationship with a Basque Separatist named Isabella Zancona, and the two of them had met the Jackal years earlier. The Jackal had shot Isabella, and although she survived, she miscarried Mulqueen's child. Zancona tells about the Jackal's participation in Salvadoran Civil War as part of the Green Berets and describes him as a psychopath: "This man was ice, no feeling, nothing."
In preparation for the hit, the Jackal purchases a long-range heavy machine gun from a gunsmith named Ian Lamont. Later on, his contacts warn him over the dark web that hijackers are trying to steal it. He kills one of them with an unknown but extremely poisonous substance. Lamont blackmails him by asking for more money in exchange for remaining silent, but he has underestimated just how dangerous his client is; while testing the weapon, the Jackal turns it on Lamont and kills him.
The Jackal seduces a gay politician named Douglas in order to steal his security clearance pass. When the FBI gets too close, the Jackal hides out at Douglas' house, only to kill him after he sees the Jackal's picture on a news broadcast describing him as a fugitive murderer.
Finally, he attacks Mulqueen's security detail, killing FBI agents Witherspoon and McMurphy and mortally wounding MVD agent Valentina Koslova. The Jackal taunts Koslova as she bleeds to death, telling her to tell Mulqueen that "he can't protect his women". Koslova later passes the message to Mulqueen before dying, and Mulqueen realizes that the assassin is targeting the First Lady, rather than the Director of the FBI, as they had originally believed.
The Jackal disguises himself as a policeman during the First Lady's speech and mounts the machine gun in a van, planning to fire it by remote control. When Mulqueen destroys the van and, with it, the machine gun's scope, the Jackal decides to start shooting wildly into the crowd, but FBI Deputy Director Carter Preston pushes the First Lady out of the way just before the weapon opens fire. The Jackal escapes into the subway, with Mulqueen giving chase and wounding him.
The Jackal grabs a young girl, Maggie, at the station and holds her hostage, threatening to kill her if Mulqueen doesn't drop his pistol. Mulqueen surrenders his weapon to save the girl, and the Jackal prepares to shoot him dead. At that moment, however, Zancona blindsides the Jackal from behind and shoots him in the neck, saving Mulqueen; the Jackal reflexively pulls the trigger of his pistol, wounding Mulqueen in the arm. As he lays bleeding on the ground, the Jackal reaches for a second pistol to kill Mulqueen, but Mulqueen draws first and shoots him multiple times, killing him. The next day, the Jackal is buried in an unmarked grave, with only Mulqueen and Preston as witnesses.
2024 Television Series[]
TBA
Background[]
- The Jackal is said to be in his early thirties.
- He speaks excellent French.
- In novel and 1973 film The Jackal is most likely former British Army sniper and Malayan Emergency veteran, according to his abilities.
- The Jackal may have been an MI6 agent after service in British Army, given his skills in disguise and evading the law.
- He apparently had experience as a mercenary soldier in Congo Crisis; his "contact" is a Belgium crime boss, based in Brussels; only the "contact" and his clients know the Jackal's real identity.
- He charges very high prices for his "Contracts", with the exception of the de Gaulle contract which takes place in Europe. Of the Jackal's three suspected contracts one takes place in the Dominican Republic, one in Egypt and one in the Congo.
- He is probably a karate practitioner, because he killed a person with knifehand strike.
- He resides in the expensive Mayfair part of London and keeps a few thousand pounds in a safe deposit box. Nevertheless, regardless of whether or not the OAS suceeds in taking over France, the Jackal is clever enough to know that de Gaulle-supporting partisans will not stop until they have tracked him down and killed him; as a result, he has a emergency plan that he will retire as a millionaire to Lebanon after killing de Gaulle.
Fake names[]
Novel[]
- Alexander James Quentin Duggan - whose birthday was very similar to the Jackal's. He sends in an application for a passport in the name of Duggan and uses this identity until he is forced to kill a woman, which requires him to switch identities.
- Per Jensen - a Dane who shares the same rough build as the Jackal. He steals Jensen's passport from a hotel and uses this identity after killing a woman. He then abandons it and switches to Schulberg's when he arrives in Paris.
- Martin Schulberg - an American who also looks fairly similar to the Jackal. He steals the passport from London Airport and uses it when he arrives in Paris. He then abandons it and switches to Andre Martin after deducing that Per Jensen would report his missing passport.
- Andre Martin - a fictional French person who is apparently a war veteran. This identity is central to the Jackal's plot and the last one he creates.
- Charles Calthrop - This is the identity of a former small-arms salesman who was in the Dominican Republic at the time Trujillo was assassinated. When Lebel uses his intelligence network contacts to search for the Jackal, he contacts Special Branch, and a member of SB later asks the Secret Intelligence Service for assistance. A man from the SIS then explains that he heard of a rumour, in which Calthrop has helped the partisans shoot the driver of Trujillo's armoured vehicle, causing the car to crash, which in turn allows his assassins to finish him. The British police from the novel assume that Calthrop is the Jackal's true identity, until the real Calthrop shows up at the end, after the Jackal has been killed. The police had erroneously concluded that chacal (i.e., Cha[rles] Cal[throp]) is French for "jackal", as well as the fact that the real Calthrop had gone on a holiday with what looked like fishing rods in his car, which cause them to jump to the conclusion that he was armed with weapons. All these, along with the fact that his passport had been left in his house, point the police in the wrong direction.
- "Mr. Herr" - this is used by a Swiss banker to refer to the Jackal
1997 film[]
- Alexander Haslip
- Charles Montrose
2024 Television Series[]
TBA
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- His code name was used by the real-life terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, already known under the code name "Carlos", was further nicknamed "The Jackal" after a copy of "The Day of the Jackal" belonging to a friend was found in his hiding place.