Eddie Redmayne is the screen’s ultimate blank space. The Oscar-winner’s default setting is a sort of bashful emptiness – half blushing British private schoolboy, half bottomless charisma void. This should make the Eton-educated thesp the perfect actor to inherit from Edward Fox the part of the titular globe-trotting assassin in Belfast writer Ronan Bennett’s reboot of The Day of the Jackal (Sky Atlantic and Now from Thursday). Who better to embody an international man of mystery than someone who seems half invisible even with the lights on?
But it doesn’t work and not just because of the underwhelming Redmayne (his Paddington Bear-squinting-through-sniper scope energy is certainly unconvincing). The original 1973 The Day of the Jackal movie – adapted from the Frederick Forsyth Cold War bestseller – was a masterclass in economy. We knew nothing of the Jackal – not even his real name – because we didn’t need to. He had been hired to kill French president Charles de Gaulle and that was enough.
That of course was on the big screen. Bennett, alas, is working in television where economy doesn’t cut it. And so the Jackal gets a padded out CV – including a wife, Nuria (Úrsula Corberó), whom he meets between kills at their minimalist pad in Cadiz, a son named Carlito, and a problematic invoicing system whereby he doesn’t always get paid on time (as a fellow freelancer I can only empathise).
Bennett puts in an entire kitchen sink worth of back story. The Jackal’s latest assignment involves taking out a far right German politician in Munich and then escaping by pretending to be a raffish collector of rare chess-sets. This brings him to the attention of Britain’s MI6, as represented on earth by agent Bianca (Lashana Lynch), her curiosity piqued by the killer’s use of a rare type of rifle. Quicker than you can say “Ulster Fry” she’s in Belfast, in a shop selling Union Jack tat and seeking the whereabouts of a loyalist mole whose brother (Richard Dormer) was a designer of cutting-edge firearms (she suspects he and the Jackal are in cahoots).
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The Jackal has problems of his own, after agreeing to a tricky job requiring him to kill a tech bro weirdo (Khalid Abdalla) at the behest of a mysterious toff played by Charles Dance. Oh and he still hasn’t got paid for that Munich job – even though he submitted his invoice by the deadline. The gig economy has come back to bite.
Every Eurothriller lives or dies by the quality of its exotic locations and The Day of the Jackal does its best to live up to that eye-candy cliche. There are languid drone shots of Paris, London and Munich (though Belfast sadly does not receive a similar cinematic glow-up) and a tense opening sequence in which the anti-hero infiltrates an office block by posing as a janitor (and then kills everyone). But there’s not a lot going on beneath the gloss – and so we come to the ultimate paradox. The Jackal is a cat and mouse drama about an emotionless killer that cries out for more heart.
