French science-fiction assassination film title…

[Arpy]

I can’t for the life of me remember much about a movie I watched a long time ago. It was French language and took place in an alternate universe in a thinly-veiled United States-like country (with a similar flag) and was about our main character, maybe a commissioner of some kind(?), investigating an assassination, and who at the end (spoiler alert!) got too close and was shot himself. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

There's La Jetée and Je t'aime, je t'aime but the other details you mention don't match up very well. They both involve time travel and the death of the protagonist. I doubt either is the one you're thinking of, sorry. There needs to be a Shazam-like app for identifying movies from keywords instead of video or stills.

 

[Owain Taggart]

There was also a Fredrick Forsythe novel, Day of the Jackal, turned into a movie or two about an Assassination on French soil, and version set on American soil. The one I saw, set on American soil ended pretty much the same as your description. Can't exactly remember the title as it's different from the book. But you'd have investigators trying to capture a dangerous assassin in a plot to foil the assassin's plans of killing the President, who also would change into different disguises to avoid capture. The only thing is, it wasn't sci-fi.

 

[Arpy]

There was also a Fredrick Forsythe novel, Day of the Jackal, turned into a movie or two about an Assassination on French soil, and version set on American soil. The one I saw, set on American soil ended pretty much the same as your description. Can't exactly remember the title as it's different from the book. But you'd have investigators trying to capture a dangerous assassin in a plot to foil the assassin's plans of killing the President, who also would change into different disguises to avoid capture. The only thing is, it wasn't sci-fi.

Were these on actual French and American soil? The movie I’m thinking of took place in some alternate universe because I can remember the flag of the country being very similar to an American one but with like maybe a bird in the place of the stars.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Were these on actual French and American soil?

As far as I know, yes. And it's probably not entirely impossible to make a sci-fi version of the story either. The story goes that there's a plot to assasinate a President, and the assassin gets hired via a terrorist organization, meanwhile you have the investigation side of the story, tracking him down, discovering his disguises, and trying to figure out his plan. At the climax of the movie, they have him out in a crowd, and he's dressed as a policemen being part of the security detail protecting the president. When he's noticed, he goes in for the kill and from what I remember, the inspector in trying to protect the President, ends up being the one killed instead.

Oh, just remembered, the American version is called The Jackal, with Bruce Willis playing the assassin and Richard Gere playing the detective.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119395/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Here's the other one:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069947/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The Day of the Jackal is outstanding.

I've no idea what film the OP is looking for. It sounds similar to The Parallax View, another excellent movie (but I doubt it's that one).

 

[JirinPanthosa]

La Jetee is what 12 Monkeys was based on no?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

La Jetee is what 12 Monkeys was based on no?

Indeed. I have both on Blu-ray. However, it's 50 years since I last saw Je t'aime, je t'aime and I now have a hankering to see it again. I like foreign language films as they often have a different take on things from the standard Hollywood fare, which seems to be trope repetitive.

 

[Owain Taggart]

^ Hollywood does seem to be rather tropey as compared to foreign and independent films.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I just realised I might have seemed to be punning trope and trop (French for "overly"). Purely accidental. Pretentious, moi?

 

[Starkers]

The Day of the Jackal is outstanding.

A fantastic film (based on a fantastic novel) Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale are both brilliant. Manages to be utterly compelling despite featuring a lot of, on the face of it, dreary detective work.

The Bruce Willis version is not even fit to be the melon Edward Fox uses for target practice

 

[Owain Taggart]

The Bruce Willis version is not even fit to be the melon Edward Fox uses for target practice

Yeah, they changed quite a bit in the Bruce Willis version, including some of the major plot points to the point that it's almost unrecognizable from the novel's original story. Only the base concept is really used.

I just realised I might have seemed to be punning trope and trop (French for "overly"). Purely accidental. Pretentious, moi?

Oui Oui, Monsieur!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

A fantastic film (based on a fantastic novel) Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale are both brilliant. Manages to be utterly compelling despite featuring a lot of, on the face of it, dreary detective work.

Indeed.

Interestingly perhaps, both actors played in a James Bond film. Fox was M in Never Say Never Again. Lonsdale was Drax in Moonraker. Both had far more interesting roles in The Day of the Jackal.