The Day of the Jackal 2024 remake is a slick spy thriller for adults

How much do you want to know about a ruthless assassin? Do you want to know their backstory? Their childhood trauma? The name of their mum?

In the 1973 film The Day of the Jackal, the killer remains a complete cypher. Is it more or less unnerving to know nothing of an individual capable of murder-for-hire? We can fathom immorality but amorality? That’s a different ball game.

The film was based on a 1971 novel by Frederick Forsyth, itself inspired by a real-life 1963 assassination plot against then-French president Charles de Gaulle, and it has now been updated for 2024.

As befitting our times, what was a film (there was also a 1997 movie starring Bruce Willis) is now a 10-part miniseries and the contract that was worth $500,000 in the 1970s is $100 million today. Even evil cabals feel the pinch of inflation.

The target is not de Gaulle but a billionaire tech titan named Ulle Dag Charles (get it?) who is threatening to release software that would make transparent all the financial institutions in the world. As you can imagine, that doesn’t suit a lot of people.

They hire an assassin known only as the Jackal (Eddie Redmayne) who has recently killed a far-right German politician with a shot from an impossible distance. Well, not impossible, since he did it but it’s also what narrows the net.

There are not many people who could even come close, even fewer weapons experts who could craft a custom sniper rifle.

These two facts kick off the hunt for the Jackal by Bianca (Lashana Lynch), a determined and prickly MI6 agent who isn’t interested in being liked or popular. What she wants is to get the job done, even if that means the ends justify the means.

This brings us back to the Jackal himself, who we first meet while he’s in disguise as an old man, trying to infiltrate an office building with beefed-up security.

Redmayne is in full prosthetics and with altered physicality and across the show, there will be different opportunities for the actor to really flex those muscles playing a character who takes on different roles. It’s not just being in disguise, it’s also the high-wire act of calibrating that performance so that it’s distinct to the audience but in the universe of the show, impressionistic.

On top of that, and this is where this version of The Day of the Jackal deviates the most from its source material, is that the character is not a mere conduit for other people’s schemes.

This Jackal has a backstory, albeit this is very slowly drip-fed, and he has a family - a wife, a baby son and in-laws ensconced in a stunning Spanish mansion. This gives the character emotional stakes and vulnerabilities, he has something to lose that’s not just the failure of the mission.

It also plays with audience empathy in the cat-and-mouse game between the Jackal and Bianca. The series gives both characters shading and perspective, and you follow them in their respective worlds. One is a killer and the other has killed, although this isn’t a “sides of the same coin” thing.

But it does split your loyalty. You don’t want the Jackal to get caught but you also want Bianca to catch him. They can’t both win, and you don’t know who you want it to be. That the series plays with that conflict demonstrates its willingness to be thorny.

The Day of the Jackal isn’t trying to reinvent the espionage thriller but what it does is lean into the tropes. They work for a reason and when it’s done with the mastery and tautness that this series puts in, it works very well.

So, yes, there are leaks out of MI6, lots of skulking around, computer screens with dossiers, car chases, foot chases, even one with a horse. But they’re used judiciously.

The show, not coincidentally, also evokes Bond, not just with the casting of Lynch, who was in No Time to Die, but with its sultry opening theme song by Celeste, who could easily be a voice double for Adele.

It’s suspenseful and intense but not overplayed. The action sequences have an impact and a level of restraint, which is not an easy balance to strike. The Day of the Jackal is disciplined and slick – this is not something Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson ever would have made.

If Red Notice or Hobbs & Shaw is a Milky Way bar, artificially sweet and insubstantial, then The Day of the Jackal is the lush richness of 70 per cent dark chocolate. A spy thriller for grown-ups.

The Day of the Jackal is streaming on Binge with a five-episode premiere followed by new chapters weekly