writing a screenplay for a thriller is hard . harder than pouring concrete under the texas sun . harder than building a bridge over troubled waters . and incidentally , a whole heck of a lot harder than writing a movie review . thrillers are all variations on a theme . you have a smart , resourceful , and powerful bad guy , who has a goal he has to meet . you have a noble and brave good guy , who has to protect the innocent , kill the bad guy , and not get killed himself in the process . the trick of thriller writing is doing all of this in an interesting and novel manner . this simple formula can lead to classic movies like north by northwest , high noon , or silence of the lambs , or big summer blockbusters like men in black , the fugitive , or air force one , or it can lead to utter dreck like masterminds , event horizon , kull the conqueror . . . . is anyone else getting depressed here ? point is , it's not enough to follow the formula . you've got to throw in something extra , something good and new and better than the last version . something to surprise and move all of us people who buy the tickets and the popcorn and the happy meals . this is a hard thing to do , but it is absolutely necessary in every way . without that something extra -- whether it's a great plot or a well-written screenplay , or great special effects or great locations or great casting or great performances or great big hungry dinosaurs -- the movie fails . that's why the jackal , with all its starpower , with all its budget , with all its hype , gets a big fat f . bruce willis is the bad guy , the jackal , a legendary killer for hire . richard gere is the good guy , a former ira assassin with a vendetta against the jackal . the jackal is trying to kill someone . gere is trying to stop him . will gere be able to stop the assassination in time and kill the jackal ? ( i'll give you three guesses , and the first two don't count . ) there are no surprises awaiting the audience in the jackal , no moment when you say to yourself , " i wonder what happens next ? " the script for the jackal isn't ripped straight from today's headlines . it's ripped off , straight from an episode of millennium . throughout the movie , we learn what the jackal's plans are and how he intends to accomplish them . no surprise . the fun of a movie like this should come from richard gere figuring out what the jackal's plan is and developing a clever plan to foil the bad guy . instead , we get two ( count 'em , two ) scenes where gere is sitting in an fbi conference room somewhere and instantly divines the jackal's plan just as if he's frank black ( or more likely , just as if he's been handed a copy of the script ) . and we never get more than a superficial clue as to why gere has had this flash of insight . it's like gere's character is psychic , but neither he nor the fbi ( or the screenwriters ) seem to know it . and just like in millennium , the bad guy has an overwhelming need to go after the people the good guy cares about , whether or not they are important to what he's trying to do or not . what's more , in the last half of the movie , the jackal , supposedly a super-smart professional terrorist who never makes a mistake , comes down with a major case of the stupids . as for the performances . . . bruce willis manages to get through the whole movie without a wisecrack , which is a major achievement , but not enough reason to see the movie . his disguises are good , but not as good or as interesting as val kilmer's in the saint . richard gere is made to talk the entire movie in an irish accent , which detracts from his otherwise lifeless and dull performance . sidney poitier is probably the most disappointing element in a overwhelmingly disappointing movie -- not that his performance is bad or anything , it's not , but it is sad that hollywood won't use this talented actor in any part other than an fbi agent ( shoot to kill , sneakers ) . writing a good plot and a good screenplay , like i said , is hard , but it can be done . it wasn't done here . it is our job as consumers to reward good screenplays and to denounce bad and uninteresting ones . do not go see this movie . you'll only encourage the producers to make more just like it . instead , stay home and rent day of the jackal , or in the line of fire , or a fire safety video , for crying out loud . anything other than the jackal , which lives up to its name by gnawing the dead bones of other , better movies .
