{"id":2104,"date":"2024-08-06T03:28:41","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T03:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2104"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:39:07","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:39:07","slug":"in-the-line-of-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/06\/in-the-line-of-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Line of Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In the Line of Fire <\/strong>(1993)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia Pictures\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 128 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Wolfgang Petersen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeff Maguire\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ennio Morricone\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: John Bailey\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 9, 1993 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Clint Eastwood, John Malkovich, Rene Russo, Dylan McDermott, Gary Cole, Fred Dalton Thompson, John Mahoney, Gregory Alan Williams, Jim Curley, Tobin Bell, Clyde Kusatsu, Steve Hytner, Patrika Darbo, John Heard, Joshua Malina, Steve Railsback.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $102.3M (US)\/$187.3M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0Clint Eastwood always gets off at least one great quotable line in his movies. \u00a0In the action-thriller In the Line of Fire<\/strong>, it\u2019s \u201cThat\u2019s not going to happen.\u201d He says it during a phone conversation with potential Presidential assassin Mitch Leary played by John Malkovich (Dangerous Liaisons) at his crazy best. When the psycho threatens to kill the Commander-in-Chief, Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan (that\u2019s Clint) sets him straight with those five words. He then proceeds to make good on his promise.<\/p>\n

As far as I\u2019m concerned, Eastwood can do almost no wrong, the sole exceptions being White Hunter, Black Heart and The Bridges of Madison County. Pretty much everything is right with In the Line of Fire<\/strong>. And why wouldn\u2019t it be? Eastwood gets to play a gun-carrying hero that any sane person would think twice about messing with. He goes up against a loathsome nut job. He gets into it with his superiors at work. He romances a woman half his age. And did I mention he\u2019s a total bad ass? I don\u2019t have to; it\u2019s a given! Unlike most of his movies in the past 25 years, the actor doesn\u2019t pull double duty as director. He turns the reins over to Wolfgang Petersen, the German filmmaker responsible for such nail-biting flicks as Das Boot (1981) and Air Force One (1997). It all equals one of the best action-thrillers of the 90s!<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the Line of Fire<\/strong> kicks off with a bang as Horrigan and his new partner Al D\u2019Andrea (McDermott, The Cowboy Way) bust a counterfeiting ring. The operation does not go smoothly. The ringleader identifies the younger man as an undercover agent and tries to make Horrigan execute him. That doesn\u2019t happen; it was never going to.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Later, Horrigan and D\u2019Andrea go to investigate a possible threat against the President. They find something rather disturbing in the yet-unknown man\u2019s apartment. On the wall is a collage of newspaper articles on famous assassinations. He\u2019s particularly obsessed with the JFK assassination. Horrigan was on Presidential detail that terrible day in Dallas. He still feels tremendous guilt over not protecting Kennedy from the assassin\u2019s bullet.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Horrigan receives a phone call from the tenant who identifies himself as \u201cBooth\u201d (as in John Wilkes). Realizing what\u2019s about to happen, the agent requests to be placed on protective detail despite the fact he\u2019s nearing the age of retirement. He immediately clashes with Bill Watts (Cole, The Brady Bunch Movie), the arrogant young agent in charge AND the President\u2019s Chief of Staff Harry Sargent (Thompson, Die Hard 2) who\u2019s more concerned with protecting his boss\u2019 image during the last weeks of his re-election campaign.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meanwhile, Mitch Leary meticulously plans how he\u2019s going to kill the President. It\u2019s a simple yet detailed plan that will put him in very close proximity to his target. The guy may be a wacko, but he\u2019s also a genius model-builder. He builds a gun out of wood in order to get it past the metal detectors. Will Horrigan be able to stop him before he achieves his objective? In the midst of all that\u2019s going on, Horrigan finds the time to start a relationship with fellow agent Lilly Raines (Russo, Lethal Weapon 3), one of the few people on his side. The aforementioned superiors think he\u2019s overreacting and want him gone. To coin Eastwood\u2019s trademark phrase, that\u2019s not going to happen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the Line of Fire<\/strong> is a hell of a great movie. I saw it twice at theaters during the hot summer of \u201993, the first time at a crowded screening where the audience responded with great enthusiasm. Eastwood may have been in his 60s at the time, but age didn\u2019t seem to be slowing him down all that much.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is one of those action movies that don\u2019t rely on unbelievable stunts and wild car chases to keep the viewers\u2019 hearts racing. It has a fair amount of action, especially in the climactic scenes at L.A.\u2019s Bonaventure Hotel. In the Line of Fire<\/strong> relies more on suspense than anything else. Why does Mitch want to kill the President? Who is he? Why is his true identity classified top-secret by the FBI? Petersen keeps the audience on the edge of their seats without trying to blow them out of the theater with loud explosions and destruction of property.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s also interesting to observe the relationship between Horrigan and Leary. The villain knows just what buttons to push when it comes to his pursuer. Malkovich delivers a frightening performance as Leary, one that earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination at that year\u2019s Oscars. The screenplay by Jeff Maguire also received a well-deserved Oscar nomination that year. He tells a great story, that\u2019s for sure.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the Line of Fire<\/strong> is tight and taut, the two most essential components of an effective action-thriller. It also serves as proof that some actors keep getting better with age. If Clint Eastwood was a bottle of wine, he\u2019d fetch a huge price at a wine auction. He\u2019s what I call vintage and classic.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Line of Fire (1993)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia Pictures\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 128 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Wolfgang Petersen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeff Maguire\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ennio Morricone\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: John Bailey\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 9, 1993 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Clint Eastwood, John Malkovich, Rene Russo, Dylan McDermott, Gary Cole, Fred Dalton Thompson, John Mahoney, Gregory Alan Williams, Jim Curley, Tobin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/In-the-Line-of-Fire-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2104"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2897,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104\/revisions\/2897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}