It is the suspense!

The Day of the Jackal (1973)
Director: Fred Zinnemann

It is like watching a sitcom re-run or a delayed telecast of a football game of which you already know the result. This movie describes an assassination attempt on President De Gaulle's life. History buffs would already know that is not how he died, and the attempt failed. Nevertheless, the excitement and anticipation of how the plan was foiled kept the suspense going.

Charles de Gaulle became the President of France in 1958 when France had just lost one of their most profitable colonies in the East, Indochina. When the Battle of Algiers reached its peak, De Gaulle discussed the self-administration of Algeria with the guerillas. Subsequently, Algeria became independent, and many Frenchmen were expelled. Under the umbrella organisation OAS, sympathisers of French Imperialism and the military forces decided that De Gaulle had to go.  

In October 1962, in a failed assassination, De Gaulle escaped a rain of 150 bullets that rained over 7 seconds into a Saab car, ferrying him from a conference. The organiser of that crime was apprehended and executed later. That was where Frederick Forsyth's fictional account of another attempt at knocking off De Gaulle began in his 1971 novel.

In the novel, the vestigial members of OAS, now in hiding, hire an unknown assassin from the UK, possibly, to assassinate the French President. The rest of the story is about how the French Police try to identify, pin down and save De Gaulle, who has no inclination to stay away from public image despite the threat.

It is interesting to see how forgery was done, and police manually went through file after file to look for criminals in the pre-computer era. Still, work got done, and crooks got nabbed. This police procedural drama keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, not because they do not know the endeavour will fail but wanting to know how the police foiled the plan and where it went wrong.

Interestingly there is another assassin, this time a flamboyant Venezuelan communist militant, who was linked to many terrorist attacks around the world in the 1970s and 80s. Because he was a South American, he was nicknamed Carlos. During an exploration of one of his hideouts, a copy of Frederick Forsyth's 'The Day of the Jackal' was found. Henceforth, he was referred to as 'Carlos the Jackal'.

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