One Shot: ‘The Day of the Jackal' set its sights on a killer with a special eyepiece
Eddie Redmayne is a sharpshooting assassin in Peacock's suspense thriller 'The Day of the Jackal,' a series whose visual language is as sleek as its chameleon-like protagonist. 'He's an enigmatic man of mystery who tries to do his work with the minimum amount of attention,' says cinematographer Christopher Ross, who lensed the first three episodes with director Brian Kirk. 'The camera is almost always moving. It has inertia to it, the idea being that there's an inevitability to the character's actions.' Propelling the stirring story is a chilling sequence where the marksman has his sights on a target 3,815 meters (2.37 miles) away, an unprecedented distance for a successful hit. 'The philosophy of the sequence is that he needs to prepare himself physically, emotionally and psychologically for this assassination,' notes Ross. In contextualizing the visceral action, the cinematographer isolated the character from the stark environment, illustrating his hyperfocused, meticulous nature as the hair-raising tension builds. The camera slowly pushes down the barrel of the gun like a ticking clock striking zero. Magnifying the Jackal's unflinching eye is a bespoke telescopic eyepiece that peers into the soul of the killer seconds before he pulls the trigger. And the Jackal doesn't miss.
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Los Angeles Times
17 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Frederick Forsyth, British author of the thriller ‘The Day of the Jackal,' dies at 86
LONDON — Frederick Forsyth, the British author of 'The Day of the Jackal' and other bestselling thrillers, has died after a brief illness, his literary agent said. He was 86. Jonathan Lloyd, his agent, said Forsyth died at home early Monday surrounded by his family. 'We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller writers,' Lloyd said. Born in Kent, in southern England, in 1938, Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent. He covered the attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, which provided inspiration for 'The Day of the Jackal,' his bestselling political thriller about a professional assassin. Published in 1971, the book propelled him to global fame. It was made into a film in 1973 starring Edward Fox as the Jackal and more recently a Peacock television series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch. In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the British intelligence agency MI6 for many years, starting from when he covered a civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s. Although Forsyth said he did other jobs for the agency, he said he was not paid for his services and 'it was hard to say no' to officials seeking information. 'The zeitgeist was different,' he told the BBC. 'The Cold War was very much on.' He wrote more than 25 books including 'The Afghan,' 'The Kill List,' 'The Dogs of War' and 'The Fist of God' that have sold over 75 million copies, Lloyd said. His publisher, Bill Scott-Kerr, said that 'Revenge of Odessa,' a sequel to the 1974 book 'The Odessa File' that Forsyth worked on with fellow thriller author Tony Kent, will be published in August. 'Still read by millions across the world, Freddie's thrillers define the genre and are still the benchmark to which contemporary writers aspire,' Scott-Kerr said.
Business Wire
18 hours ago
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Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege ® X Update Now Available
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Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
‘Day of the Jackal' author Frederick Forsyth dies at 86
Frederick Forsyth, the British author of 'The Day of the Jackal' and other bestselling thrillers, has died after a brief illness, his literary agent said Monday. He was 86. Jonathan Lloyd, his agent, said Forsyth died at home early Monday surrounded by his family. 'We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller writers,' Lloyd said. Born in Kent, in southern England, in 1938, Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent. He covered the attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, which provided inspiration for 'The Day of the Jackal,' his bestselling political thriller about a professional assassin. Published in 1971, the book propelled him into global fame. It was made into a film in 1973 starring Edward Fox as the Jackal and more recently a television series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch. In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the British intelligence agency MI6 for many years, starting from when he covered a civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s. Although Forsyth said he did other jobs for the agency, he said he was not paid for his services and 'it was hard to say no' to officials seeking information. 'The zeitgeist was different,' he told the BBC. 'The Cold War was very much on.' He wrote more than 25 books including 'The Afghan,' 'The Kill List,' 'The Dogs of War' and 'The Fist of God' that have sold over 75 million copies, Lloyd said. His publisher, Bill Scott-Kerr, said that 'Revenge of Odessa,' a sequel to the 1974 book 'The Odessa File' that Forsyth worked on with fellow thriller author Tony Kent, will be published in August. 'Still read by millions across the world, Freddie's thrillers define the genre and are still the benchmark to which contemporary writers aspire,' Scott-Kerr said.
