Starring Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, Sidney Poitier and Diane Venora Directed by Michael Caton-Jones Rated R, with strong violence and profanity Running time 125 minutes Jack gives this film a rating of 8 out of 10

(Nov. 14, 1997) -- The Jackal, the new espionage thriller with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere, offers the best of two cinematic worlds -- the old-fashioned cerebral plotting of the original 1973 Day of the Jackal and the stylized and highly visceral violence of a top-quality, 1990s action film.

Director Michael Caton-Jones updates the original Jackal with high-tech thrills as a world-class assassin schemes to kill a U.S. government official.

Willis contributes his best performance in years as the mysterious Jackal, an enigmatic, cold-as-ice professional killer who is being paid $70 million by Russian gangsters to make a "very public, very bloody" statement against the United States.

Though little is known about the Jackal, the FBI gets brief hints of a plot afoot and puts Deputy Director Preston (Sidney Poitier) in charge of the effort to stop him. In the spirit of post-Cold War cooperation, Preston is aided by a capable Russian officer, Major Valentina Koslova (Diane Venora).

Preston and Koslova know so little of the Jackal, they feel compelled to get help from two former espionage agents -- a retired Basque separatist named Isabella (Mathilda May) and a now-imprisoned IRA operative named Declan Mulqueen (Richard Gere).

Mulqueen becomes especially impassioned about the hunt: Not only can he earn his freedom, but, more importantly, he can settle the score in a relationship of long-standing bad blood.

No doubt inspired by the original Day of the Jackal screenplay, new writer Chuck Pfarrer has come up with a script that is decidedly more polished, thought-provoking and exciting than his previous work for such B-grade films as Navy SEALS and Hard Target.

In The Jackal, Pfarrer cleverly explores the way the extremely professional Jackal finally shows his Achilles heel: When he discovers he's up against his old adversary Mulqueen, the Jackal forsakes his strictly business profile and tries to make it personal.

Thanks to taut editing and Caton-Jones' ever-tightening pacing, The Jackal will move viewers ever closer to the edge of their sits. And though a few scenes offer intense, bloody violence, they only serve to heighten the mood.

The new film leans more on the original Jackal for its depiction of a professional assassin and his intricate planning and disguises, than for its narrative. In the '73 Jackal, the assassin sought to kill French Premier Charles DeGaulle. Here the target is quite different -- and a bit of a mystery until the finale.

The Bruce Willis assassin also has access to a world of computers, cellular communications, state-of-the-art weaponry and other elements that the original Edward Fox killer could only dream of.

But while the new Jackal has much in common with other modern action films, it outstrips most of them through the quality of its performances. Beyond Willis' unswerving, cold-blooded portrayal of evil, Richard Gere contributes a well-shaded portrait of an antihero -- a man with a violent past, but with a growing moral awareness. On a more practical level, Gere also contributes a generally plausible Irish accent.

Veteran Sidney Poitier -- who doesn't appear in films as much as he should -- brings gravity and professionalism to his role as a key FBI official, while Diane Venora lends integrity and courage to the hard-nosed, deeply scarred Major Koslova.