Montreal: In the new Allegro Films political thriller, Jackals, Aidan Quinn plays Ramirez, a ‘Carlos the Jackal’ lookalike transformed by obsessive Western intelligence agents into a counter-espionage monster.

Filming on the $22 million action picture began in Montreal on the weekend of Feb. 10-11 under the direction of Christian Duguay. Quinn (Legends of the Fall), Donald Sutherland and Ben Kingsley are the film’s leads. Tom Berry and Franco Battista are producing and Joe Cohen is the executive producer. Triumph Films, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is the u.s. and international distributor.

Producer Berry says Jackals is a development of the production partnership formed on Screamers, the $12 million Allegro sci-fi feature shot here in early `95.

Says Berry, ‘We all realized we had something going here, a lot of synergy between the producer, the director and executives. We felt we were doing good things and should continue. This industry is mostly one of relationships and strangely enough in this business one can have a whole career with relatively few.’

With Screamers, and now Jackals, Allegro, a subsidiary of Montreal’s Coscient Group, has emerged as bonafide producer of international theatrical movies. Allegro’s `95/96 production slate includes the Giles Walker ensemble comedy The Color Grey, Roger Cantin’s film noir comedy sequel La Vengeance de la femme en noir, and Deadly Dance, a mow-style feature slated for later in the year.

Locations on the three-month, 50-plus day Jackals shoot include Israel and Budapest, and wraps May 26 in Montreal. One of Jackals’ most spectacular location special f/x is the transmogrification of the grim 19th century prison, St. Vincent de Paul, atop snow-covered Mont-Royal, the site of a secret American training base.

Following the first week of dailies, Duguay (Million Dollar Babies, Adrift) says spirits on the set are high, even if the -37 degree wind-chilled temperatures isn’t. ‘Rarely have I seen characters fall into place this quickly. That’s thanks to the professionals I’m working with, but also because of the quality of the script. Donald Sutherland and Ben Kingsley were really excited by the well-defined characters, and their chemistry.’

Set among the secrets and shadows of the netherworld of international espionage and terror, Jackals was scripted by writer/producer Dan Gordon and Dr. Sabi Shabtai, author of the novel Five Minutes to Midnight. The story’s point of departure is some of the known information on the flamboyant and partly mythological Carlos Sanchez, the infamous Carlos the Jackal.

Sutherland’s character is the darkly-obsessive cia handler, while Kingsley plays an equally driven Israeli agent.

Distinction undone

As agent Ramirez completes missions to Libya and other terrorist locales, Duguay says the moral distinction between agent and target is undone.

‘The consequence is a journney into darkness and the unleasing of an unexpected monster, a wild animal. But Jackals is first and foremost a story about obsession, it’s an action film, but the action is entirely emotion-driven,’ he says.

Duguay says he is using short focal (wide) lenses for the story’s establishing shots and ‘in creating an objective point-of-view,’ and will then move to longer and longer lenses. ‘You don’t appreciate long lenses if they are not contrasted.’

At the point in the story when the agent’s soul ‘is invaded by this crazed animal,’ the director says he intends to adopt a more ‘subjective p.o.v. style, a bobbed-up, granular look (a vision of the world through excessive animalistic adrenalin a la Raging Bull) enhanced by Softimage graphics.’

Ramirez’ sadistic education as a ruthless and lethally trained counter-intelligence agent takes another step into the abyss at an abandoned Israeli army barracks where he is ‘instructed in love-making by a special agent.’

The Softimage enhancement scenes and the film’s overall cgi are being produced by Buzz Image Group.

Craft credits on Jackals go to dop David Franco, editor Yves Langlois, production designer Michael Joy, make-up artist Adrien Morot, costume designer Denis Sperdouklis, pm Renaud Mathieu and second unit cinematographer Georges Archambault. The film is being crewed by the stcvq.