The Jackal: gayest movie ever, or what?

So in addition to the fun of the MOCCA festival (more on that later, perhaps), we had my folks visiting this weekend, which was unexpectedly lovely. Very low stress, lots of good food and pleasant company. You go, mom and dad!

After they cleared out early yesterday afternoon, I celebrated the pleasant weekend by nearly ruining it: I watched the 1997 remake of THE DAY OF THE JACKAL starring Bruce Wilis and Richard Gere. It's called THE JACKAL. I don't know how many of you have seen it, but it's just awful. The only redeeming feature, as far as I'm concerned, is the great big fat gratuitous homoerotic undercurrent. It's not even really an undercurrent so much as a rip tide of gayness -- a tsunami of man-on-man wantin'.

Check it: halfway through the movie, Bruce Willis's character, the eponymous Jackal, a cold-blooded (and clearly sorta crazy) killer-for-hire seduces a dude in a gay bar for *no reason connected to the plot*. He doesn't need anything from the guy to further his eeevil plan. He just wanders into a gay bar and spends the evening getting the guy drunk, then KISSES HIM and promises to look him up the next time he's in town.

So, the next time he's in town, he looks the guy up, sets up shop for his eeevil plan in the guy's garage, treats the guy with more hostility than he's shown anyone else so far, lets him figure out that he's actually an assassin, and then kills him.

OK, you're saying, sure, this *could* be the behavior of someone who's a) crazy and b) very fucked up specifically about his gayness, to the point where he's driven to enact this painful parody of courtship: get the guy's hopes up and then watch him realize how foolish he ever was for taking it at face value -- perhaps recreating a primal trauma of some kind. Or, you point out, this could just be the behavior of a killer who needed a place to crash for the night, and who's results-driven enough that he didn't care how he got it: even kissing a dude is an acceptable way to further the eeevil plan.

But, consider the following scene:

As the plot thickens and the climax approaches, the movie cuts from scenes of the fruitless manhunt which is trying to capture the Jackal, to a brief scene in a mood-lit penthouse hotel room, where the Jackal LOUNGES (nearly fully reclined) in a bathrobe that's FALLING OFF OF HIM (more skin showing than covered) with a half-empty bottle of champagne in the foreground, listening to club music and thoughtfully waving his LITERALLY LIMP-WRISTED hand around. He sits up enough to make a call, and when his contact fails to pick up, he hangs up the phone, *pouts* his shiny, shiny (lipglossed?) lips, and tilts his head back sensuously.

Let's consider the meaning of this scene in the movie: A private moment with the Jackal.

Theory 1: this is the actor and filmmaker trying, in their lame-brained way, to make the mysterious killer at the heart of this movie appear even crazier and more sinister than we already know he is, and for some reason they just happened to pick behavior, pose, hairstyle, body language and context that normally would serve as easy identifiers -- cinematic shorthand -- for homosexuality.

Theory 2: this is the actor and filmmaker trying, in the most obvious terms available to them, to make the mysterious killer at the heart of this movie appear gay as a day in May.

This is not to mention the whole backstory with the movie's "hero", former IRA sharpshooter Declan McQueen, who has beef with the Jackal 'cause the Jackal double-crossed him in an arms deal 15 years back AND shot his woman, who was pregnant at the time with Declan's baby. The woman survived, the baby did not, and Declan went to jail with a big ol' grudge. He was, as you can imagine, only too happy to get out of prison and assist the FBI in their attempts to track down the Jackal, who, during the course of the movie, kills a spunky Russian Interpol officer who had some kind of flirtation going with Declan, and makes it very clear that her murder is personal -- is aimed at Declan.

At the movie's (painfully awful) climax, having cleverly foiled the Jackal's eeevil plan, Declan chases him into a DC subway tunnel, where the Jackal, now wounded and desperate, takes a teenaged girl hostage. Hiding behind a column with her, he pokes her head with his gun and whispers, "Say, 'Help me, Declan!'"

The girl yells "Help me, Declan!" three or four times, and the Jackal yells it along with her on the last one, then breaks out into crazy, painful laughter. It's actually just about the only interesting moment in the movie. What kind of help does he want -- or did he want, once, from Declan? We never found out why that arms deal went so wrong, or why the Jackal took so much pleasure in shooting Declan's girlfriend.

So, I posit:

Once upon a time, there was a very crazy-crazy, very gay assassin called the Jackal. One day he met a very pretty and only slightly crazy and probably more than slightly gay IRA assassin called Declan. They had some kind of crazy gay assassin chemistry which possibly blossomed into some kind of crazy gay assassin fling, and the crazy-crazy gay assassin called the Jackal decided he had met his soulmate. But the only slightly crazy IRA assassin called Declan decided the Jackal was crazy and creepy and that he, Declan, was SO not gay, and went home to his pretty Basque separatist girlfriend, whom he promptly knocked up in a fit of manly virility.

So, in a fit of manly and gay jealous rage, the crazy-crazy gay assassin double-crossed Declan, shot his girlfriend, and went off to dwell on his romantic betrayal for fifteen years, until he was called out of retirement for one last romp roll in the hay assassination.

It's so hard for crazy-crazy gay assassins to find appropriate romantic partners, guys. This movie was clearly about the aftermath of a good love gone wrong. All those people who said it sucked so much ass it's still picking shit out of its teeth were watching the wrong movie.

posting for reference

I'm posting ukashin's fantastic tomato coconut fish curry here for my own reference, but y'all should try it too as I can attest to its DELICIOUSNESS and it looks pretty easy, too!

2 medium king fish, head off, tail off and cut into 3/4 inch pieces
3 tbs vegetable oil
2 c. chopped onion
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/2 inch ginger root, peeled and grated
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp tumeric powder
1/2 tsp red chili powder (or to taste)
1 14 oz can of coconut milk
1 28 oz can of tomatoes
salt


1. wash and dry fish. sprinkle lightly with salt.
2. heat oil in large saucepan. add onions and cook until deeply carmelized, about 10 - 15 minutes, maybe more. this is where most people screw up curry - you must let the onions brown and begin to break down because they are the base of the curry. if you do not, your curry will not be nice and thick.
3. add garlic and ginger. cook one minute.
4. add dry spices. cook one minute.
5. add coconut milk and tomatoes. cook 15 - 20 minutes, until curry is a nicely thick and smelling very good.
6. add fish and simmer 6 - 8 minutes, until fish cooked through.
7. serve over basmati rice (basmati rice is best cooked on the stove with a bay leaf thrown into the water to add nice flavor).

feeds three hungry boys and one small girl with plenty to spare for lunch the next day.