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The Day of the Jackal (1971) a thriller by Frederick Forsyth about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organization, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France. The original movie was a masterful retelling of the hunt of the jackal. The unrelenting pursuit of the assassin by France's best detective Claude Lebel is what made the movie great.

The 2024 remake has nothing in common with the book, other than its title. The plot is a convoluted, confused mess with multiple side trips to lengthen the story to five episodes. A simple 2-hour movie would have accomplished much more.

The Jackal, played with style by Eddie Redmayne, originally a lone cold-blooded professional now has a wife and a child, really? An attention getting distraction that adds nothing to the plot but an unneeded soap opera distraction so common in today's film. The MI6 operative chasing the Jackal appears to be the most incompetent person in MI6.

Watch the original again, you'll be better off.

The team is going to protect a family from a violent drug cartel; doesn't bring semi-auto rifles or extra ammunition, Stabler gets there faster from his home than the patrol cops or SWAT/ESU, no one appears to be wearing body armor including FBI agents outside, standard equipment for a protection detail or anytime cops expect incoming fire.

Not to mention the fact these highly important witnesses against a violent drug cartel would be protected by a specialized tactical team, i.e. ESU, FBI HRT, not by detectives. When the kid's gun went off the muzzle angle was nowhere near Sgt. Bell for her to be struck.

Not to the usual L&O meticulous standards.

Every episode is funnier than the last, somehow the "team" always comes up with some dump "experiment" to fill the time in between the stupid facial expressions from the "cast," and I do mean cast, members.

I fully expect the crew from The Curse of Oak Island to make a guest appearance and dig for treasure, I mean, you gotta fill an hour, right? To be followed by the wacky, zanny antics of Bobbo and the crew from (NOT) Finding Bigfoot. Why not, at least it would make the show funnier because serious it sure isn't. "Dragon"? Really?

So tired of the "mysterious Mesa" references. You wanna know? Hire a construction crew to build an apartment complex on top of the Mesa and they'll have it excavated and a complex built in 90 days, end of show.

Last night's episode (8/1/23) had me in stitches at the end. When Fugal dropped the "cone of silence" on the room I was rolling on the floor. Too funny...