Calthrop - this does not make any sense. - The Day of the Jackal (1973) Discussion

[–] thanos_1996 13 years ago

i think that the jackal knew calthrop or at least used his name for some of his previous operations
the fact that they were able to connect calthrop to the jackal was by pure luck since calthrop wasnt the jackal

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[–] muzilon 13 years ago

These questions have already been partly answered in the FAQ section, "Is Charles Calthrop the Jackal?"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069947/faq

In a nutshell, Calthrop is a red herring who had nothing to do with the Jackal. It's explained in the book - but not in the movie - that Calthrop, a shady arms-dealer, had to flee the Dominican Republic (incorrectly referred to in the movie as "Dominica") in a private boat, hence the lack of an exit visa in his passport.

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[–] Dantès 13 years ago

That's crap though. I like a good red herring, but they never explain it in the movie, so it's just a plot hole. And it doesn't count if they explain it in the book. They shouldn't be companion pieces; the movie has to be coherent on its own.

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] Dantès 13 years ago

It's totally a plot hole!

This other guy just happened to have an entry visa into the Dominican, but no exit one; that's very suspicious. What's the explanation for it? If this guy was innocent, there should be an explanation. A good mystery explains red herrings. It's too easy to create good twists or herrings that have no logical explanation, but a good story can keep them plausible.

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[–] jd-276 13 years ago

Not a plot hole at all.

I have never had a problem with it. Police inquiries frequently go up blind alleys. Why should this be any different? The other thing is that, even though they are not really looking for Calthrop (who is on holiday in Scotland), it accidentally leads them to the Public Records Office where a search establishes the Duggan lead.

Two coincidences: one useful, one a red herring. Life's often like that.

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[–] Dantès 13 years ago

It is a plot hole, for the reason I explained in my last post.

You're missing the point by looking at it as just a "blind alley."

How/why did the guy have a Dominican entry visa with no exit? That's too strong a red herring to not have an explanation. They're giving you a very compelling clue that has no reasonable answer.

Imagine you're watching a murder mystery where someone gets hacked to death. The cops find a suspect with a blood-covered machete in his car, but it later turns out he's not the killer. Why did he have the machete then? You have to explain that. That's practically what the passport thing is.

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[–] jd-276 13 years ago

It is a plot hole, for the reason I explained in my last post.

You're missing the point by looking at it as just a "blind alley."

I don't see how. It works as a coincidence. Films almost never explore these possibilities but just because they don't, that doesn't mean they shouldn't. Read the book.

How/why did the guy have a Dominican entry visa with no exit? That's too strong a red herring to not have an explanation. They're giving you a very compelling clue that has no reasonable answer.

The lack of exit visa does not prove any causative link with the Trujillo assassination. It doesn't prove that Calthrop is or isn't The Jackal. Unless I've missed your point, I can see no problem with this at all.

In the book it's explained that Calthrop probably had to leave the Dominican Republic in extremis because of the number of arrests and extra-judicial executions which were taking place in the days after Trujillo's murder (that's a historical fact for you). The book explains all of this quite well.

You have to explain that.

Not if you come up with something better.

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[–] Dantès 13 years ago

I have read the book, but that's irrelevant; it's a cop-out excuse for bad writing. Any movie or book is supposed to be a stand-alone story. It doesn't matter if it's based on something else. You can't leave out plot points and say "Oh, just read the book, it's all in there." It's inexcusably lazy.

It's like inviting someone over for dinner, then handing them a half-finished meal and a cookbook, then saying "Here's most of it. Finish it yourself if you want the complete version."

People want to watch movies for recreation. They shouldn't require homework.

If you can use the "it's explained in the book excuse," then why bother explaining why the OAS wants to kill De Gaulle? Or even the Calthrop red herring? You could skip a ton of stuff as long as it's covered elsewhere.

And you're definitely still missing the point. I know it doesn't provide a definite link, but it's a very very strong piece of circumstantial evidence, too strong to not be explained. It's just like my analogy about the bloody machete in my last post. I thought that was a very simple comparison.

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[–] jd-276 13 years ago

It's inexcusably lazy.

You do it your way and I'll do it mine.

I'll spare you the judgement and I'd appreciate the same in return thanks.

It's like inviting someone over for dinner, then handing them a half-finished meal and a cookbook, then saying "Here's most of it. Finish it yourself if you want the complete version."

Coincidences happen all the time in life. Why should they not happen in movies?

People want to watch movies for recreation. They shouldn't require homework.

I belong to a generation which didn't require all movies to fit a specific formula. Neither do I need to be spoon fed. I appreciate that's not to everyone's liking and that's why most of the films I watch are not to other people's tastes.

Just what homework is required here?

If you can use the "it's explained in the book excuse," then why bother explaining why the OAS wants to kill De Gaulle?

That's not even a logical connection. The reason I suggested reading the book was because I thought you might benefit from it. How was I to know you already had?

...too strong to not be explained.

Ever read any real-life murder investigations?

I'm not a policeman but in my day-to-day job I'm exposed to such things fairly regularly. And this is probably why I don't have a problem with it. There was a case a few years ago where a woman in my town had her baby stolen. When the baby was found, a news crew got a shot of the father, who was wanted in another state for an extensive list of drug-related crimes. As a result of that shot, he is now in jail.

Look at it not from the point of view of the officers investigating the child stealing but from the point of view of those seeking the father. That is the sort of coincidence which allows me to accept the possibility of it happening in this film.

And don't forget the final line of the film, "If the Jackal wasn't Calthrop then who the hell was he?" We never get to answer that question and I don't have a problem with that.

BTW, I do not hold Forsyth in very high regard as a writer. He makes basic mistakes, perhaps as a result of incautious proof-reading or perhaps he's just careless. I am not trying to defend him in that way. I just don't have any issue with the way the identity of the Jackal is never revealed. After all, how many famous assassins are there?

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[–] lwi101 13 years ago

I've worked in aviation for 15 years, and having an entry or exit stamp without having a corresponding exit/entry stamp happens every day. It raises an eye brow, but in every case I've dealt with, additional passports were admitted to. Nothing illegal, but it raises a question, that is all. Every now and then the border guard doesn't press hard enough or just misses the page and there is no stamp. It raises a question, but you are not going to be convinced the man is an assassin just because of that. Calthrop was a person of interest, not even a suspect, although the search of his flat was meant to gather more evidence. The passport was interesting because of the missing stamp, AND the fact that he was believed to be out of the country without his passport. The clue carried as much weight as the CHA CAL theory. Calthrop also states that he was in Scotland fishing, so technically he was out of the country (England), but of course British citizens don't need passports to travel in Great Britain. I've always assumed the Scotland reference was there to explain the "Out of the country", but I do not know for sure a British citizen would phrase it that way. In any case, I assume all that dialogue was in there to tie up some of the lose ends, and not leave the line of thought that is in this thread. While this is a police procedural, the climax come about because of blind dumb luck, not excellent detective work. I think the final comment is a hint that the author believed that the Jackal would have succeeded in getting away clean had LaBelle not stumbled over him, also explaining why the Jackal was willing to continue on after learning that he was blown. His exit plan was that good.
L

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[–] jd-276 13 years ago

Life's often like that.

It is one of the more enjoyable aspects of the book.

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[–] franzkabuki 12 years ago

I´m sure they could have come up with a number of plausible reasons why the guy had visited Dominica - all of them redundant and irrelevant to the story. And, for someone who wathces movies "for recreation", you sure take things awful seriously, nit picking on some unimportant details over several posts on IMDb.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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[–] ksjazzguitar 10 years ago

Not a plot hole.

A plot hole is when something is logically impossible, a mistake in the story.

This is simply a mystery that isn't explained. We are simply in the dark, just like Lebel. In real life, not everything gets tied up into a nice little bow. They aren't plot holes, they're just unanswered questions. I like that this gets left unanswered. That's how life is sometimes.

Again, why there is no exit stamp is explained in the book - get a library card. It's a fun book.

Calthrop is a mystery. I assume that the real Calthrop was the arms dealer who went to the DR. At the same time, the Jackal was there to assassinate Trujillo. Maybe he used the real Calthrop's identity to get into the country at the same time and just kept using that passport. I don't know, it's a mystery.

Addendum:

Actually, I've gone back and checked the book and no one refers to him as Calthrop but the police, English and French. At no point does the narrator identify him as Calthop, nor does the Jackal or anyone in the OAS. We have no idea what identity he was using before he switched to Duggan, we're just left to assume that he was calling himself Calthop, even if as an alias.

And there are some slim hints in the novel, too. Calthrop's background check reveals that while he works for an arms firm, he is described as not knowing much about rifles. No heavy military is mentioned. And at one point, the tobacconist that the Jackal used as a mailing address for the delivery of the fake Duggan passport doesn't recognize the Calthrop photo, but thinks he recognizes the man in the Duggan photo, maybe hinting that they aren't the same guy. Maybe they just look kind of alike.

So if the Jackal did do Trujillo, maybe it just got blamed on Calthrop in a rumor. Maybe two Englishmen in the DR who kind of look alike were easy to confuse. Maybe the fact that Calthrop worked for an arms firm helped confirm it in peoples minds. Caltrhop smuggled himself out of the DR in a hurry, which makes sense as he was in danger since he was a foreigner doing arms business with the just assassinated dictator, but that just made him look guilty. And Trujillo was a bastard, so MI6 just never bothered to follow through on the rumor - they just didn't care. Or maybe the Jackal never had anything to do with Trujillo and it's all just a lucky coincidence. A bunch of theory, but it makes sense.

But it isn't a plot hole. The author intended this surprise and unsettling uncertainty to be part of the reader's experience.

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[–] alouette1977 13 years ago

It's not a plot hole or lazy writing; it's a red herring that successfully had us going right to the closing scenes. We can hear in the off screen dialogue that the Jackal wasn't Calthrop after some investigating (the fact the Jackal was killed in Paris and Calthrop shows up at his apartment is a big enough clue.) I don't need any extra explanation about the suspicious lack of exit stamp(s) in the passport found; that's just part of the red herring that sucked me in. We know all about how the Jackal forged and borrowed passports multiple times. We can chalk it up again to his successful efforts at covering himself, and it just deepens the mystery as to who he really was!

"Everyone else may be an a**hole, but I'm not!" - Harlan Ellison

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[–] jd-276 13 years ago

Could not have said it better than that!

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[–] ancatdoh 13 years ago

It's not a plot hole or lazy writing; it's a red herring that successfully had us going right to the closing scenes. We can hear in the off screen dialogue that the Jackal wasn't Calthrop after some investigating (the fact the Jackal was killed in Paris and Calthrop shows up at his apartment is a big enough clue.) I don't need any extra explanation about the suspicious lack of exit stamp(s) in the passport found; that's just part of the red herring that sucked me in. We know all about how the Jackal forged and borrowed passports multiple times. We can chalk it up again to his successful efforts at covering himself, and it just deepens the mystery as to who he really was!
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Definitely not a plot hole. The Brit cops were chasing the wrong guy based on nothing more than rumors an Englishman was mixed up in the Trujillo assasination. Remember the two older Brits trading unofficial info from their respective agencies that were not supposed to share info (the old boy network) in the park? One guy was giving the other information that pointed to the possibility of Calthrop being The Jackal. Remember how YGBSM the other Brit looked when the CHA CAL was written on the newspaper? Of course, he checked Calthrop out anyway, and the old man neighbor tells them "he's abroad. He often is, you know." Well, the cops assumed that meant out of the UK, not, as it turns out, Scotland, where he wouldn't need the tantalizing passport. If Calthrop had been home, they'd have questioned him and been done with him. But since he was "abroad" and they assumed he must, therefore, be travelling on a false passport, Calthrop became a suspect, and their suspicions put them onto the passport-against-death-certificates trail that led to Paul Oliver Duggan.

Goodbye, Mr. Duggan! The Jackal assumes the identity of the Danish school teacher and stays ahead of Lebel long enough to get to Paris and hide out with the gay guy from the Turkish bath, then becomes the elderly, one legged French vet and almost pulls it off.

Only at the very end do we learn (the same time the Brit cops do) Calthrop was innocent all along and The Jackal's true identity died with him.

Cops suspect the wrong guy based on what turn out to be wrong suspicions all the time, and sometimes the wrong guy gets arrested, tried and convicted.

In this flick, they finally realized they'd been suspicious of and chasing the wrong guy, and they'd NEVER know who The Jackal was.

All of the errors that led them to suspecting Calthrop would be discovered in the aftermath, but they were trying to beat the clock and get The Jackal before he could kill DeGaulle, so of course the haste explains their mistakes.

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[–] moosefeathers 12 years ago

In the movie, there's a scene where he's walking around and he overhears a lady and man coming out of a building and she says, "All my tenants are on holiday." So, I assumed he just got into an apartment and left the passport there.

EDIT:
And i was wrong! this is what you get for "sleeping" and "watching! LOL

Swing away, Merrill....Merrill, swing away...

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[–] di1an 12 years ago

It's not a plot hole - things like this happen every day, especially in criminal detection. The Yorkshire Ripper had been questioned and released before finally being caught later on, like many criminals have been investigated and forgotten before capture through sheer blind luck.

Secondly, The Jackal would never be that sloppy or obvious. Never finding out who he really is great character writing and storytelling.

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[–] qofreason 11 years ago

Whether or not it's technically a "plot-hole" is beside the point.

Coincidence #1: The English serviceman wildly guesses the Jackal could be Charles Calthrop because of literal similarity to the French.

Coincidence #2: Calthrop happens to be abroad.

Coincidence #3: By "abroad" we mean he happens to be in Scotland (of all places), where he would not need a passport.

Coincidence #4: He happens not to have a stamp for when he left the Dominican Republic.

The reason this stuff isn't SO annoying is that the clue never cracks the case. The tenuous connection in coincidence #1 combined with #2, leads the English to look at passports and death certificates, where they eventually track Duggan.

The problem is: why didn't the police ever look for the man pictured in Calthrop's passport? Why not question the neighbor for a description of Calthrop? Stumbling upon that clue should have set the police back.

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[–] 11 years ago

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[–] lwi101 11 years ago

On the other hand, its is possible that Calthrop was the guy in the DR, and that the Jackal had no part in the Trujillo attempt, but had a background that was completely unknown. It was only rumored the Jackal was in on the Trujillo assassination.

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[–] Degree7 11 years ago

That seems to make the most sense, that the Jackal had no connection to Calthrop and that the poor innocent guy had only the misfortune of visiting the Dominican Republic after a high profile assassination.

My bet is that The Jackal was responsible for the assassination, but the rumours from him at the gun club there got him mixed up with Calthrop, with them being possibly the only two Englishmen in the country. Maybe the Jackal stole Calthrops identity in the Dominican without him knowing?

Limit of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief: directly proportional to its awesomeness.

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[–] Nikon11 10 years ago

Yes, I agree. I don't like all kinds of twists in books and movies - but I liked this at the end. And I can accept that there's no real answer.

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[–] Hancock_the_Superb 10 years ago

The problem is: why didn't the police ever look for the man pictured in Calthrop's passport? Why not question the neighbor for a description of Calthrop? Stumbling upon that clue should have set the police back.

This is a good point. In the novel there's a scene where Thomas explains away the differences between Calthrop and Duggan. The Jackal must be wearing lifts, dyed his hair, contact lenses, etc. Not completely unreasonable considering Jackal's disguises, but it seems like he's trying to convince himself more than Mallinson. Would have been hard to include that in the movie without giving the game away.

I'm afraid that you underestimate the number of subjects in which I take an interest!

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[–] 10 years ago

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