Eddie Redmayne has never looked as good as he does in The Day of the Jackal – particularly in the various sequences in which his assassin character, the eponymous Jackal, dons carefully constructed prosthetics to pose as an old man. The British actor and former model possesses a quirky beauty rooted in the slender angles of his face, and as it turns out, it’s precisely these facial aspects that allow him to look easy incredible as someone you would find in a retirement home.

Consider Ralf the caretaker, whom the Jackal kills and plays as his role in the outstanding opening sequence of the Peacock and Sky series:

Redmayne as an old man.
Photo: Peacock

This introductory route sees The Day of the Jackal lay the foundation for its fundamental appeal. We follow the Jackal, who eerily embodies a grumpy janitor virtually invisible to the rest of society, to break into an office building and shoot the son of a populist German politician. It’s pure competence porn: The Jackal puts on the prosthesis, smokes a cigarette to simulate the janitor’s poor lungs, and shuffles to the right floor. He is very convincing, so much so that when his cover is blown and the jackal kills several people with alarming rapidity, the tension between Redmayne’s appearance so very ancient and his movement so very precise leads to unexpected hilarity – a quality that comes through the way the show and… The actor plays the scene with absolute seriousness.

Such a visually strange business repeats itself again and again The Day of the JackalIt’s about both the assassin who has been given a major contract and an MI6 agent, played by Lashana Lynch, who is obsessed with hunting him down. At the beginning of the third episode, the Jackal takes on the role of the heartbroken descendant of a deceased rich person who visits a high-end German funeral home to extract confidential information from its computer system. The age this particular person is intended to represent is left unclear in the scene, but the jackal uses a stick and maintains a sense of frailty in his body, both of which contribute to a further visual iteration of the geriatric Redmayne. Note the worldly age implied in his thousand-yard stare:

Redmayne as a slightly less old man.

Is he a man in his thirties? 50s? 60s with dyed hair? Who knows. I will believe anything.

Redmayne’s work in The Day of the Jackal shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, as the actor has long been drawn to physically transformative performances. Think back to a decade ago, when we got a whole lot of Redmayne in one fell swoop: He won the Best Actor Oscar in 2014 for playing Stephen Hawking, the British genius who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease The theory of everything. The following year The Danish girl saw his role as Lili Elbe, the early 20th century transgender landscape artist, in a performance that earned both criticism from the LGBTQ+ community and another Oscar nomination. In 2015, Redmayne also appeared completely out of action as the villainous Balem Abrasax in the Wachowskis’ space opera Jupiter ascendingin which he vacillates violently between aggressive whispers and screams with every cell in his body. Sometimes in the same sentence! (“I CREATE LIFE!” he shouts to a mortified Mila Kunis, before fading back to a croaking sound: “… and I destroy it.“) Redmayne’s expansive thespianism has seemingly faded into the background in recent years, likely due to his starring role in the series Fantastic beasts Films are mostly lapses in memory. But Redmaynia briefly resurfaced earlier this year when he went off the rails cabaret The Tonys performance caused great confusion, horror and general excitement among millions of viewers. Like many of his previous performances, my boy Redmayne got dirty.

If The Day of the Jackal hasn’t turned around Redmayne’s stock price yet, but it really should. The series is a rollicking watch, despite being the third adaptation of the 1971 novel – following a critically acclaimed 1973 Fred Zinnemann film and a much smaller 1997 remake starring Bruce Willis and Richard Gere – that no one really cares about had asked. This version serves primarily as a modernization of the source material; Instead of hiring the Jackal to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle, as in the novel and the Zinnemann film, in the series the Jackal is hired by Charles Dance’s British oligarch to take out a big-brained technician who is threatening to overthrow the world Elite by releasing software that would make all financial transactions transparent. (Don’t think about it too hard.)

Because of this modernization impulse The Day of the Jackal has a mixed sensitivity. Yes, it’s a thriller based on the pleasure of watching a man with a gun do something efficiently (as a 15-year-old boy at heart, it’s hard for me not to observe the Jackal’s clinical killing efficiency and not over it). to think about: That is kewl). But this is in contrast to the sequences with Redmayne in old man drag, which, while very convincing, are simply convincing silly They always make me cheer with joy.

The highlight The climax of the series’ prosthetic parade comes in the sixth episode, in which the Jackal poses as a very British septuagenarian, wheelchair and all, and accompanies Lynch’s Bianca on a flight. (He even grabs the seat directly behind her!) Redmayne’s obvious physical transformation is interesting enough here: note the convincing liver spots and topographically decorated facial lines. But the way the geriatric nature of the persona fits so perfectly with Redmayne’s underlying qualities is what sells the package so well. The actor has a naturally soft, ringing voice that always sounds like he’s panting a little. The jackal transforms it into a geeky affect that evokes empathy. “Thank you very much, young man,” he murmurs to the airport employee who pushes him to a taxi. Redmayne’s British accent also has a recognizably patrician quality, adding a subconscious level to what passersby might suspect about this particular old man. Is he an emeritus professor at Oxford? Third generation landed gentry? An accountant? The mind wanders but doesn’t ask too many questions. This is a great disguise.

Redmayne as a very old man.
Photo: Pfau/Peacock

Not unlike Redmayne’s appearance in Jupiter ascendingJackal’s personalities tend to fluctuate in between very large And tiny. Redmayne is only truly transformative when he’s dealing with an old man; Otherwise he is barely camouflaged. Towards the end of the pilot, the Jackal poses as a collector of rare chess sets and is basically Eddie Redmayne with glasses. In the second episode, where he takes on the role of a duck hunter to meet a dog handler out in the wilderness, it’s Redmayne in pretty outdoor outfits. In the next part, when he poses as a chauffeur? Redmayne with hat. These thinner disguises are theoretically interesting because they suggest that people are largely conditioned, i.e. identities solidify based on physical context, but that’s probably giving this series a little too much credit.

In this week’s climactic episode, in which the Jackal finally attempts the long-awaited attack on tech genius Ulle Dag Charles, the assassin assumes the identity of a rather middle-aged classical music concert-goer to sneak into the venue. This is an example of that The Day of the Jackal turns out way too small with the fairing. As you can see, the look is mostly Redmayne:

Redmayne as a somewhat old man.

Sure, there is a certain visual peculiarity between the receding hairline and the large forehead. And Redmayne, the actor, convincingly conveys the feel of a wealthy older man complaining in his upper-class accent about the price of all the concessions he’s buying. (He Is (After all, he’s planning on hiding in the rafters overnight, so the guy needs something to eat and drink.) But the costume isn’t nearly as visually convincing, opaque, or adorable as it could be. Do you know what would help? Add a few more decades to that face, throw in a stick and let Redmayne bend over. Who will know?