CNN - All the days of 'The Jackal'

By IAIN BLAIR

LOS ANGELES -- "I didn't want to just do a remake of 'The Day of the Jackal,' " says director Michael Caton-Jones of his new thriller "The Jackal',' which opens November 14. "This is a completely different movie."

Indeed, while Fred Zinnemann's 1973 classic study in suspense revolved around a plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle, Caton-Jones' thriller stars Bruce Willis as a slippery villain who's apparently targeted the deputy director of the FBI, played by Sidney Poitier, and only an imprisoned IRA terrorist, played by Richard Gere, can stop him.

This "Jackal's" shoot was also a grueling marathon that spanned 10 international cities over a 20-week period, leaving its director and cast and crew exhausted by its end.

"In addition to dealing with all the logistics and travel, the main challenges for me were dealing with all the different types of cinematic techniques I had to use," reports Caton-Jones, the Scottish director whose credits include "Rob Roy" and "Scandal."

"It's essentially a very simple story: Here's a guy hired to kill someone, and another guy hired to stop him. That's the basic plot, but to tell that story effectively took an amazing amount of planning and prepping."

Caton-Jones also liked the challenge of making "a very contemporary" thriller after directing a number of period films.

"I thought it was a great opportunity to try out some new stuff I hadn't done in the past," he notes. "There are sequences on planes, yachts, helicopters and a lot of dramatic scenes ... so there were all these different aspects to the filmmaking side of it that really interested me."

The director was also eager to work with "three huge movie stars." The only surprises, he says, were how smoothly things went.

"It was very peculiar having Bruce play the villain for a change," he adds. "But I liked that subversive casting, and of all the big action heroes, I think he's got the most acting chops."

Caton-Jones also has high praise for Gere. "I expected him to have some problem with not being the star of the show, instead being part of an ensemble. But because he's a very good actor, he took to it very well."

It didn't hurt that Gere was called on to share many scenes with Poitier, the director adds.

"Sidney brings such a level of honesty and integrity and stature, it's really seductive. It created this very interesting dynamic. And like Bruce, Richard was playing slightly against type. He's usually cast as a lawyer or businessman; here he's playing an Irishman and a much more masculine role."

Gere worked hard to perfect his Irish accent, "and did a brilliant job," says his director. "It's impeccable, and I should know as I live in Dublin at the moment. The one we selected is a rather soft brogue, and Richard mastered it completely.

"As for all the predictions that there'd be this huge clash of egos, it never happened," adds Caton-Jones, "maybe because they're not all together in many scenes. It's very much a cat-and-mouse chase, so that was never a factor.

"Also, the style of the film was basically Bruce operating on his own, and all the others chasing him in a group. So when I was shooting with Bruce, it would sometimes simply be one shot where he walks through an airport, and that would be him for the day. And then I'd be directing fairly dramatic scenes full of technical acting, where the others would be in rooms debating about where he'd disappeared to. So it was a continual change of pace on the shoot itself."

Pulling the complicated shoot together was "a total nightmare," admits Caton-Jones. "There was one six-week period when I was scouting locations and I stayed in the same bed just twice. The amount of traveling I did for this film was crazy."

Locations included Montreal, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Virginia, Wilmington, North Carolina, Charleston and Helsinki, with second units in London and Moscow.

"The amount of flying between all these places was painful," Caton-Jones remembers, "and on top of that we had a new setup in each place along with a new team of people organizing everything ahead of us. So quite apart from the logistics of deciding what to shoot and how, the actual process of getting everyone and all the equipment there at the same time was a major undertaking."

The shoot started in August 1996 and didn't end until Christmas Eve in Helsinki.

"That was particularly difficult," Caton-Jones says. "Everyone was tired and wanted to go home, and we had to shoot a 20-hour night, and we only had three hours of daylight anyway at that time of year. And, to complete the picture, it was also minus 20 degrees. ..."

While Helsinki was extremely tough, the filmmakers' plan to cope with advancing fall and winter during the shoot went quite smoothly, according to the director.

"I made this plan to keep heading south in America, and stay ahead of the turning leaves. So we began in Montreal and worked our way down, and as we had a lot of exteriors, that way it always looked like the same time of year."

While the shoot was "a mad rush," post-production has been relatively relaxed, "because we always knew we had this year-end release," Caton-Jones says. "I've really been able to work on the pacing and the music -- and catch up on some sleep. This was a great experience, but you can't go straight into another big location shoot like this. It would probably kill you."

© 1997, Iain Blair. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate