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How new? Consider: In The Day of the Jackal, the villain was a suave, blond, erudite Englishman played by Edward Fox. In The Jackal, it's...Bruce Willis. Caton-Jones, the Scot who directed Scandal and Rob Roy, liked the choice because ''it was relatively subversive to take someone known for being an action hero and make him a villain. Of all these action heroes, I think he's the one with the most acting chops.'' Of course, casting Willis upped the ante for his nemesis. ''When you're casting,'' the director says, ''your leading 'good' and your leading 'bad' have to have equal weight.'' Hence Gere — as an imprisoned IRA terrorist from Belfast.

If this sounds way different from the Jackal you know, that's the point. ''Actually, I haven't seen it,'' Caton-Jones says of the '73 flick. ''As soon as I knew I was going to do this, I stayed away, because I wasn't making a remake.'' So in this $60 million non-remake, the killer's an American who crosses borders with slippery ease; he's dead set on shooting down a mysterious American while playing cat and mouse with Poitier as deputy director of the FBI and Venora as a Ninotchka-style ex-KGB major with a huge burn scar on her face. ''It's intriguing to play that kind of role,'' says Venora. ''How it's edited and all that stuff is out of my control. But the film that we shot, I loved.''

In fact, this Jackal is so new that Zinnemann — who died last March at 89 — urged Universal not to use the original title. Caton-Jones even met with Zinnemann in London — and agreed with him. ''My personal feeling was that we should've called it something else from the beginning,'' says Caton-Jones. ''Zinnemann said, 'I don't want them to use it.' I said, 'I think you should fight it. Go for it.' It was a storm in a teacup. I said [to Universal], 'Call it whatever the f--- you want' — but that's not a very good title.'' (Nov. 14)

UPSIDE Hits like Air Force One suggest moviegoers are hungry for politically charged thrillers.
DOWNSIDE Flops like The Devil's Own suggest they're tired of hearing American stars speak in fake Irish accents.

ONE NIGHT STAND

STARRING Wesley Snipes, Nastassja Kinski, Robert Downey Jr., Ming-Na Wen, Kyle MacLachlan
DIRECTED BY Mike Figgis

When is a Joe Eszterhas movie not a Joe Eszterhas movie? In 1994, the notorious screenwriter of Basic Instinct and Showgirls sold New Line Cinema an outline for a movie about adultery for a cool $4 million. But when director Adrian Lyne opted to devote himself instead to the still unreleased Lolita, New Line recruited Figgis, hot from the critically acclaimed Leaving Las Vegas, to put the project on film. After seeing his rewrites, the well-compensated Eszterhas amicably bowed out, explaining ''It would be dishonest for me to have credits on this movie.''

Says Figgis: ''The original Eszterhas script was not for me — it was very sexually upfront — but there was something about its three-act structure I thought was very strong.'' So Figgis turned it into the tale of an L.A. advertising director (Snipes) who has a brief encounter in New York with Kinski, returns home to his wife (Wen), then reencounters Kinski a year later. ''I don't think there's anything left of the Eszterhas script at all,'' he adds, putting the affair to rest. (Nov. 14)


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