I always look forward to a 1970s action/thriller, and this one pushed many of my James Bond buttons: tons of location photography, exotic locales, sports cars with manual transmissions, everyone is smoking, naked women (and men), checking into hotels, passing through Customs, talking on landlines - I eat it all up with a spoon! This movie is also fun for all the nuts-and-bolts detail of how to fake your identity while travelling in Europe, and how the government can catch you, before everything was computerized.
Edward Fox, as the assassin The Jackal, is a bit of a cipher, unfortunately too much of a cipher for me to develop much of an emotional response to his character. As the movie progresses, he chews up and spits out more and more innocent civilians, but he doesn't seem like a sociopathic killer, or a tortured human being either.
The late arrival of Michael Lonsdale as the detective drafted to catch The Jackal was a pleasant surprise to me. A frumpy, unassuming French detective, he has all the brains among the French and Brit bureaucracy that otherwise just throw manpower at the manhunt. He speaks very little (and Derek Jacobi as his secretary gets as many lines) and I was hungry for the movie to focus more on his character.
The third act, the day the Jackal plans to assassinate the president of France during a massive public event, is a spectacular setpiece of filmmaking. Shot at an actual massive Parisian holiday celebration, the unwitting participation of thousands of spectators, police, the military parade, it all adds to the realism and production value of the movie.
The actual climactic moment of the movie is a little silly, but I was still satisfied.
One more note - the movie has zero musical score after the first five minutes that sets up the story - all the music through the remainder of the movie is diegetic. Works wonderfully.