The Day of the Jackal (film)

The Day of the Jackal is a 1973 AngloFrench political thriller film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale. Based on the 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth, the film is about a professional assassin known only as the Jackal who is hired to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle in the summer of 1963.

In the Paris suburb of PetitClamart onAugust 1962, an assassination attempt is made on the President of France General Charles de Gaulle by the militant French underground organisation OAS in anger over the French government granting independence to Algeria. As the presidents motorcade passes, de Gaulles unarmoured Citron DS car is raked with machine gun fire, but the entire entourage escapes without injury. Within six months, OAS leader Jean BastienThiry and several other members of the plot are captured and BastienThiry is executed.The remaining OAS leaders, now exiled in Vienna, decide to make another attempt, and hire a professional British assassin Edward Fox who chooses the code name Jackal. Agreeing to the killers demand of half a million US dollars for his services, the OAS leaders order several bank robberies to raise the money. Meanwhile, the Jackal begins to plan his assassination of the highly protected French president. He travels to Genoa and commissions a custommade rifle and fake identity papers. As a professional, he spares the reliable gunsmith, but kills the forger when the man attempts blackmail. In Paris, he sneaks an impression of the key to a flat that overlooks the Place dujuin 1940. ........

Source: Wikipedia