The Day of The Jackal starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch, follows an assassin who achieves the seemingly impossible. When he is tasked with taking out a high-profile tech leader, he is met with challenge after challenge. While trying to complete his latest and most challenging mission, he is trying to evade the MI6 agent, Bianca.
I haven’t watched the original 1973 film version of The Day Of The Jackal, but I’ve been an Eddie Redmayne fan since The Pillars Of The Earth. It was exciting to see him embody a slightly more “nasty” role in this new Sky show.
The starting episode introduces us to The Jackal and his way of working. We are also introduced to Bianca who becomes obsessed with finding who managed to accomplish an impossible shot. From there, the story develops as The Jackal is recruited by big politicians and high profile people in the UK to assassinate a tech giant who plans on releasing new software that would be catastrophic for the rich.
The majority of the series then follows The Jackal as he tries to prepare for the biggest challenge he has faced. But during this time, we also get to find out more about him, and his personal life. We see how things begin to unravel and he has to continuously think of new ways to adapt to the situation at hand.
At the same time, we see Bianca get closer and closer, but isn’t supported by her colleagues. She’s brushed off for her theories even though as the viewer, we know she’s right. She too starts to struggle to balance her professional and personal life as the story unfolds.
I’ll start off by saying the show was fantastic, but the last episode was frustrating.
Every episode was well thought out but the it didn’t feel like a clear finale. In fact, it felt more like it was just a set up for season two, which is frustrating after having invested hours in the story. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a season two, but I expected the end of the story (of season one) to have a stronger impact than it did.
A clear storytelling perspective chosen in this show is the similarities between The Jackal and Bianca. They are on two opposing sides (one is supposed to be doing the right thing and the other, doing the wrong thing) but we see how similarly they conduct themselves. It’s a heavy theme throughout, especially towards the end but it isn’t particularly impactful.
It’s clear that the storyteller wanted us the see that but it’s done in such an obvious way rather than allowing the audience to come to that conclusion on their own. There is one fantastically visually pleasing shot in the final episode though of the two of them.
What’s interesting is that we are led to dislike Bianca but to like The Jackal. We (as the audience) are rooting for the bad guy! Now, that could be because we meet The Jackal first and often, we root for the main character. I believe it’s more than that though and it’s to do with what we just mentioned. We see how similar the two of them are and actually, Bianca ends up being more morally corrupt than The Jackal. He has a clear objective but Bianca ends up endangering a lot of people because of her obsession rather than trying to protect people.
There’s a lot of politics in this show, to do with the army, the government, special forces, etc. which isn’t particularly interesting but it does help with understanding The Jackal. We also get a flashback episode which is one of my favourites.
The pacing of this show is fantastic as we continually learn more about The Jackal, but we also see the corruption of others who theoretically should be good people. However, the last episode does let the show down. Everything that felt positive the further you went in, but by the end, you’re practically at the beginning of the story again.
The actors are all fantastic though, as is the cinematography. I look forward to season two if there is one, but hopefully they create a more well-rounded story.
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