En la línea de fuego

Clint Eastwood is Frank Horrigan, a Secret Service agent haunted by his failure to react swiftly on the job when JFK was assassinated. We're meant to feel sympathy for him, I presume, but I felt none after this admission: "I could tell he was hit. I don't know why I didn't react. I should have reacted.... I just couldn't believe it."

Excuse me?? Horrigan's entire job, all his training and his sanctimonious talk, is geared to protecting the President, who gets volumes of death threats. But when an attack happens, Frank "couldn't believe it." Instead of Dallas being a wake-up call, telling him he's in the wrong line of work, he stubbornly stays on the job, ultimately becoming the insubordinate (read: antihero) old cuss we meet 30 years later.

He is also predatory, not only with his partner (Dylan McDermott), whom he begs and bullies to get what he wants, but with a colleague, Lily (Rene Russo), whose attraction to him can only be explained by the need for a love interest for Eastwood, who is even given jazz chops in this movie, lest we forget who we're watching and start thinking Frank is a fictional character. The movie could have been cut by twenty minutes, and been more amusing, if Lily had sparred rather than slept with him.

John Malkovich is memorable as Leary, the villain aiming to assassinate the current President, and Wolfgang Peterson and his able DP John Bailey capture him from every angle and plenty of close-ups. Leary's phone chats with Horrigan are riveting because of Leary's dialog, which actually generates anti-government sympathy: he was well-trained as a killer by the feds, and apparently well paid, too (he self-funds his assassination plot, once dropping $50G without batting an eye). Meanwhile, all Frank does during these calls is growl, threaten, and swear.

It's an intricately structured movie, cleverly manipulating the plot to deliver some very close encounters, including a rooftop death scene that is meaningfully filmed. The showdown scene in the glass elevator where Frank says "Aim high" works nicely, too, but the ending is standard nick-of-time Hollywood, triggered when Frank has a sudden insight into the when-and-where of Leary's plot.

It's a well-made film, start to finish, but seriously flawed by Frank's character, who they don't bother to make admirable or credible, let alone alluring. Just never let us forget that he's Clint Eastwood.

In The Line of Fire gives us a great game of cat and mouse. Clint Eastwood is plagued by John Malkovich in this riveting film. Malkovich says he's going to kill the president, and he purposely calls Eastwood, and pushes his buttons. He questions Eastwood's ability to protect someone. Malkovich brings a cold, but very intelligent mindset to his character. Everything he does, he does for a reason, and he's not shy about killing. Eastwood has to overcome the suspicions of his superiors in order to catch Malkovich, but no one wants to listen to him. The result is a film that crackles with suspense that escalates to a tense scene in a ballroom at the Bonneventure Hotel. Wolfgang Peterson ratchets up the tension and we feel every turn.

Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) is a secret service agent plagued with guilt over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, while he was on duty. Thirty years later and the current president is entering a re-election campaign, but he is receiving death threats; and Horrigan has been called in to assist in what should be a routine research operation. John Malkovich plays the professional assassin and master of disguise who is tracking the president, and using the past he begins to torture Horrigan in a psychological duel of cat and mouse.

Malkovich, Eastwood and Rene Russo all give wonderful performances in this top notch thriller. The direction is excellent and the entire picture is charged with tension and intrigue throughout.

A must see for thriller fans 8/10

This is another of Eastwood's many movies mixing intrigue, action, and a dollop of romance, along with "The Gauntlet," "Firefox," and so forth. Clint's acting range by now is pretty familiar. In this one, he's taciturn and a bit outrageous, especially with women and superiors. There are no surprises in his performance. But the film itself is something of a surprise; it's above average.

Clint is Frank, a Secret Service agent who, perhaps in a moment of doubt, failed to catch the bullet that killed JFK. He then took to drink, which drove his family away, and now plods along in the bureaucracy until he is contacted by John Malkovitch, calling himself "Booth," who strikes up a sort of skewed relationship with him based on their shared, disillusioned conviction that everything is meaningless except the impulse to escape dreariness and predictability. Now, this is rather an anfractuous set of attitudes for a performer like Clint to project, but he does rather well, less robotic than usual. And he does seem to carry around with him, like a burden of stone, the memory of that moment in Dallas.

He's tested again halfway through this movie. He is hanging from the roof of a tall building, grasping Booth's hand, and he pulls his pistol and points it at Booth, who asks him if he is really willing to shoot. If he does, of course, he saves the president from an attempted assassination by a CIA-trained murderer, but he does so at the cost of his own life. Booth twits him about the situation as they hold hands in midair.

Later Clint even has a short speech, talking to Renee Russo, about his failure to save the president in Dallas. "If I'd have reacted quickly enough, I could have taken that shot . . . and that would have been alright with me." It's underplayed, but his voice chokes slightly, his eyes water, and his lip trembles. It's one of the few scenes in any of Clint's films that might properly be called "moving." We know from his newfound resolve that given another chance he would take the bullet this time. (The irony is that he doesn't like the current president. Who could? He gives pompous speeches in Colorado about how they "carved a nation out of the wilderness." Didn't they do the same thing in Las Vegas?)

It's often said that a movie is only as good as its villain. It isn't true, nothing is that simple, but an argument could be made for its truth value in this case. The reptilian John Malkovitch with his Tartar eyes is marvelous.

Talk about disillusioned. Okay, he can ham it up a little, sniffing with disdain even as he plugs two innocent hunters between the eyes, but he's fascinating on the screen. Renee Russo has little do to. Fred Thompson, as the chief White House aid, is now back in politics, a relief for movie-goers. If Clint's acting range is limited, Thompson's is something less. In every film he's been in, he wears the same solemn and dissatisfied expression, as if constantly plagued by some form of volcanic digestive disorder.

The direction by Wolfgang Peterson is as good as it was in "Das Boot," which is pretty good. There is a great deal of the usual suspenseful cross-cutting in the final shootout. And when Clint and Russo fall into an impassioned embrace in her hotel room and scuttle backwards towards the bed like two weasels in heat, Peterson playfully shows us their feet along with a succession of objects dropping to the floor -- not only the usual garments but handcuffs, guns, beepers, palm pilots, Dick Tracy wrist watches and other impedimenta. Interrupted, Clint lies back on the bed and sighs, "Now I have to put all that stuff back on again."

Well written and worth watching.

'In the Line of Fire' is one of those Hollywood films that shows up on tv quite a bit, but although I've seen it a few times, I usually end up sitting through the whole thing again. Why? - It's GOOD! Clint Eastwood is great as usual, and the character he plays is interesting and more fleshed out than usual. The character, Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, is haunted by the fact that he was on the detail that failed to protect President Kennedy in Dallas, and now he's forced to match wits with a professional assassin that is openly declaring that he will kill the president. However, the film doesn't make him a depressed, brooding, and obsessed character. He's charming and personable, and is realistic as a guy that has experienced a lot in life and is comfortable in his own skin. He's even quite convincing when he flirts with the pretty younger agent played by Rene Russo. The killer, played by John Malkovich at his best, is cerebral, deliberate, and enjoys playing high stakes games of life and death. He even goes by the name of another presidential assassin, John Booth.

The film is consistently enjoyable, and it delivers all the goods - suspense, action, romance, and drama - all in their proper amounts. It's a fun film that is really helped by the great actors in it!