It is the early 60s in France. The remaining survivors of the aborted
French Foreign Legion have made repeated attempts to kill DeGaulle. The
result is that he is the most closely guarded man in the world. As a
desperate act, they hire The Jackal, the code name for a hired killer
who agrees to kill French President De Gaulle for half a million
dollars. We watch his preparations which are so thorough we wonder how
he could possibly fail even as we watch the French police attempt to
pick up his trail. The situation is historically accurate. There were
many such attempts and the film closely follows the plot of the book.
