[COLUMN] The Day of the Jackal Features Eddie Redmayne at His Best - and His Worst | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

Note: This piece contains spoilers for the first five episodes of The Day of the Jackal, which premiered on Peacock this week. It’s… fine. The opening sequence is great, at least, but it’s far too conventional in its plotting and far too languid in its pacing. But when it knows how to use Eddie Redmayne, which is about half the time he’s on screen, it’s pretty good. So, if you want to watch it, feel free to bookmark this and come back.

As a performer, Eddie Redmayne has a very distinct energy that hasn’t always been used particularly well. To put it simply, Redmayne is an actor who works very hard, and who is either unable to mask the effort that he puts into his performances or simply chooses not to conceal it.

There is a cliché that the Academy Awards tend to recognize “the most acting, not the best acting.” So it makes sense that Redmayne won his Best Actor trophy at the relatively young age of 33 for playing the paralyzed physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything and picked up another nomination the following year for playing transgender woman Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl. These are not subtle and nuanced performances. These are very mannered and very physical roles.

Redmayne hasn’t always been well cast. When asked to go big and broad, as he did in the short-lived Fantastic Beasts franchise, Redmayne can often feel like he is playing a collection of quirks and tics rather than a fully-formed character. When asked to play a more conventional or less eccentric role, as in The Aeronauts or Les Misérables, Redmayne can fade into the background. Despite having won the highest accolade in the world of movie stardom, Redmayne is curiously undefined.

To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with this. It’s occasionally nice for an actor to do unshowy work. In The Aeronauts, for example, Redmayne is very consciously supporting his Theory of Everything co-star Felicity Jones, as if returning a favor to a fellow actor. However, Redmayne has always had what might be described as big “theatre kid” energy, a desire to not only work hard in his chosen field but to make sure the audience knows that he is working hard in his chosen field.

This sort of energy can be off-putting, particularly in an industry where movie star appeal is often anchored in how effortless the actor can make it look. Part of the magic of movie stars like George Clooney and Brad Pitt is that it never really seems like they are trying particularly hard – even when they probably should be. In contrast, it can be unsettling to watch a performer whose entire screen persona seems to be making sure that the audience appreciates the effort that they are putting in.

This is perhaps why Redmayne’s bigger and bolder choices lend themselves to mockery. His scenery-chewing turn in Jupiter Ascending won him a Golden Raspberry Award just one year after his Oscar win for The Theory of Everything, but it is by far the stronger performance of the two because it’s supposed to be that distracting. His performance as the MC from Cabaret at the Tonys went viral, but that’s a role that demands unsettling and discomforting effort from its performer.

The Peacock adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal manages to capture both the best and worst impulses of Eddie Redmayne as a performer. On paper, Redmayne is perfectly cast as the international assassin known primarily as “the Jackal”, a contract killer renowned for his skill and craft. He is the best at what he does, with the show’s opening set piece culminating in a headshot at 3,815 meters, beating the world record of 3,540 meters. The Jackal puts in the work.

There is an argument that stories about hit men are ultimately about craft. They are, in effect, “competence porn” shorn of any sense of morality. These are tales of people operating at the very highest levels of their profession, with no margin for error. The fact that these individuals are contract killers is part of the appeal – these are people so good at what they do that the rules that govern normal society do not apply. There is no good or evil, there is only craft and skill.

This was always part of the appeal of Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, which would frequently slow down episodes for montages illustrating the art – and it is an art – of the con or the hustle. These are smart and resourceful individuals engaged in the art of (to use a common euphemism of the genre) “problem solving.” They are presented with a challenge, a series of obstacles, and then forced to rely on a combination of planning and improvisation to accomplish their task.

With this in mind, it is notable that the two most recent high-profile movies about this archetype, David Fincher’s The Killer and Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, feel very much like metaphors for the craft of their authors. The Killer is quite literally about what happens when a perfectionist messes up the perfect shot, as he comes to terms with the fact that his work does not exist in a vacuum. Co-written by star Glen Powell, Hit Man is a thoughtful meditation on performance and self-actualization.

As such, it is no surprise that the most interesting aspects of The Day of the Jackal play as a meditation on acting as a profession, and that these elements end up being a very good fit for Redmayne as a performer. Redmayne always seems like an actor who wants the audience to appreciate how hard he is working, so he is perfectly suited to a television show that is largely about the borderline obsessive perfectionism of somebody operating in that space.

This is clear from the opening scenes of the show. The Jackal is introduced wearing heavy prosthetics to pass himself off as a late night janitor to infiltrate the offices of a German newspaper. The Jackal studies his reflection in the mirror. He plays back a tape recording of his subject’s voice, learning a few rote phrases of German, trying to nail the mannerisms. Before walking into the office, he puffs on a cigarette to get the right gravelly tone. The Jackal is working hard to sell his performance.

The show is at its best when it fixates on the character’s craft, because this feels like the part of the show that most effectively dials into Redmayne’s unique energy. The Jackal isn’t just a former army sniper, he is a performer. Many of his schemes involve social engineering and disguises, and the tension of these sequences – the Jackal sneaking into places he shouldn’t be, befriending oblivious civilians – derives from the uncanny quality. Is the Jackal selling this too hard – or is Redmayne?

Redmayne has never been a performer who has been able to convey genuine “warmth.” This isn’t necessarily a criticism, to be clear. On-screen charisma isn’t necessarily a skill that can be taught or learned. Indeed, there’s something to be said for a performer’s ability to convincingly portray a reptilian coldness and detachment. Redmayne works best when playing a character who is a little “off.” This is why he was so effective as a serial killer opposite Jessica Chastain in The Good Nurse.

So The Day of the Jackal is most compelling when it focuses on the lead character’s process. The Jackal keeps a secret vault in his home with a plaster cast of his own head for designing make-up. In negotiating a meeting with potential client Zina Jansone (Eleanor Matsuura), the Jackal specifies a “right of cut off”, a term most often used in the development of film and television projects. Zina talks to the Jackal like she is a fan, claiming to be “a huge admirer of [his] work.”

Burt Reynolds once argued that “all actors are thieves”, in that much of the work that they do is stolen from observations about real-life individuals. At several points during the show, the Jackal is shown to take inspiration from observing the people around him. Trying to figure out how to smuggle a gun into a highly secure environment, he takes note of a young girl’s cast. The gears turn in his head. He could make that work, fashioning out an entire character from that detail.

Unfortunately, The Day of the Jackal lacks its title character’s commitment to the premise. The central appeal of Forsyth’s novel – and Fred Zinnemann’s beloved adaptation – was the unknowability of its lead. In the novel and film, the Jackal was less a fully-formed individual than a pure abstraction. The Jackal could be anybody. He could shift identities effortlessly. The character was ultimately nothing more than dreadful purpose concealed behind a set of theatre masks.

Stretching the adaptation out to ten episodes, The Day of the Jackal cannot resist the urge to flesh out the eponymous assassin. The first episode builds to the reveal that the Jackal has a home life waiting for him in Spain, with his beautiful-but-oblivious wife Nuria (Úrsula Corberó) and their son Carlitos (Adony and Saul Barajas). The show makes it very clear that this relationship is to be taken at face value. The Jackal is a family man, a professional who goes home to a loving wife.

It is a clumsy and transparent attempt to make the character more sympathetic and more human. Inevitably, Nuria becomes aware that her husband has been lying to her, forcing him to offer some modest truths to help win back her trust. “I love you, Nuria – and Carlitos,” the Jackal assures her. “That’s not a lie. Never have been. But I knew that if I told you the truth about myself, I would lose you both.” The show clearly expects the audience to take the Jackal at his word.

Even beyond the fact that it’s incredibly rote and lazy storytelling, an obvious attempt to stretch the material to reach a streaming running time, it is also not something that plays to Redmayne’s strengths as a performer. Redmayne is not convincing as a man who does terrible things because he deeply loves his wife and child. In contrast, he is very believable as an obsessive perfectionist who operates at the highest levels of his craft and puts in a frankly unsettling amount of work.

Redmayne is both a demonstration of the greatest strengths and the greatest weaknesses of The Day of the Jackal. The most interesting scenes in the show weaponize something unique and distinct about Redmayne as a performer, the very visible effort that defines so much of his on-screen work. However, the show’s weakest moments are those that ask Redmayne to play more mundane and routine story beats, material that he has never been particularly convincing at.

The Day of the Jackal is at its best when it's focused on the lead character’s craft, and least compelling when it tries to sell his humanity. It’s killer, but with far too much filler.