The central character in the story is an assassin. He seems breezy and cheerful, but he kills anyone who gets in his way. Even at the end of the film, we don't know who he was, how he learnt his skills and made his contacts, but he's a believable villain.
The plot of the film is a cat and mouse game between Jackal, the assassin, and a policeman, Lebel, tasked to track him down. Jackal persists with his mission rather than giving up even as the police draw closer and closer to him.
Many of the scenes of this film have been much imitated by later works, but this one has a dreadful realistic edge which has been lost in modern-day thrillers.
Despite its deliberate pace, it is a continually watchable depiction of an assassin at work.
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