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It's awfully long, but The Day of the Jackal (which inspired a remake almost 25 years later) is a terribly compelling look at the machinations of an assassin and the military/police machinations that must occur in order to apprehend him. Or, more to the point, the machinations of 1973, before the dawn of the electronic age, when hotel registration cards had to be collected by a local policeman, deposited at the station, messengered by motorbike to a city, and phoned in to HQ if a match was made. It's inefficiency that lets our British Jackal (Edward Fox) get within spitting distance of his target, Charles de Gaulle, after nearly a week of travelling across Europe with the French cops (led by Michael Lonsdale) on his tail. Delightfully intelligent and often irreverant, it's a good yarn and a good thriller to boot.
