Yesterday I watched the film of the American director of Austrian origin Fred Zinnemann “The Day of the Jackal” / The Day of the Jackal, 1973, a joint production of Great Britain and France. It is an adaptation of the English writer Frederick Forsyth, who wrote about such things with knowledge, because for more than 20 years he was an agent of MI 6, like another famous writer John Le Carré, and even Somerset Maugham was an agent, as he visited even Russia, about which he wrote in several of his works that I also read. The film tells the story of the planning, preparation and execution of the assassination attempt on French President Charles de Gaulle, and at the very beginning of the story of the assassination attempt and the names of its organizers, which actually took place. Then the organizers were caught and the leader was shot, they were the worst enemies of De Gaulle from the SLA organization, who could not forgive him for granting independence to Algeria. In the film, we see a group of OAS-sheep of four people who plan a new assassination attempt, keeping the entire operation a secret. For its implementation, they decide to invite a person from the outside, whom none of the locals know, the choice falls on a certain Englishman, who is given the code name Jackal. He asks for a huge sum of 500 thousand dollars, for which they have to organize several robberies of banks. And then we see how scrupulous Jackal prepares this crime, thinking through literally everything to the smallest detail. But at some point after the capture of the security services, which also did not sit idle, one of the members of the group becomes known their plans and even the code name of the shooter. And the hunt for him begins. Despite the fact that he acts alone, and hunted by a huge number of police and special services, he constantly manages to escape. The end is tense, I won't tell you. But since everyone knows that De Gaulle died of his own accord, it is clear that the assassination attempt failed, but it was very interesting to watch the process. A lot of things happened there. I liked the film, liked the actor who played the Jackal, Edward Fox, whom I had seen before in some English films and TV series, but did not particularly remember, although the face is familiar, but his daughter Emilia Fox, also an actress, remember much better.
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