• Release Date: 2008-07-01
• Genre: Thriller
• Artist Name: Tobin Bell, Clyde Kusatsu, Gary Cole, Patrika Darbo, John Heard, Steve Hytner, John Mahoney, John Malkovich, Dylan McDermott, Rene Russo, Fred Dalton Thompson, Clint Eastwood, Jim Curley, Sally Hughes
• Director: Wolfgang Petersen
• AMG Rating:
• MPAA Rating: R
• Category: Feature Films
• Cautions: Violence, Adult Situations, Profanity
• Year: 1993
• Running Time: 127
• Movie Country of Origin: USA
• Available Language: English
• Subtitles: Eng/Fre/Spa/Por/AR/KO
  

Clint Eastwood delivers one of his finest performances, as a secret service agent haunted by his past in Wolfgang Petersen's taut thriller In the Line of Fire. Eastwood plays Frank Horrigan, a secret service agent who keeps thinking back to November 22, 1963, when, as an agent hand-picked by President Kennedy, he became one of the few agents to have lost a president to an assassin. Decades later, psychotic Mitch Leary (John Malkovich) is stalking another president (Jim Curley) running for re-election. He has spent long hours studying the psyche of Frank Horrigan, and he taunts Horrigan (feeling that there is a bond between them), telling him of his plans to kill the president. After his conversation with Leary, Horrigan makes sure he is assigned to presidential protection duty. Horrigan has no intention of failing his president this time around, and he is more than willing to take a bullet. But everything goes Leary's way -- he is smart and cagey and the president's aides refuse to alter the itinerary. As the election draws closer, Horrigan's chances to catch Leary look to be less and less a possibility, and he begins to doubt his own abilities -- both now and in the past, when Kennedy was murdered. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Thriller

Haunted By the Past, Bodyguards, Protecting the Innocent, Assassination Plots, Mind Games

Paranoid, Tense, Menacing, Moody, Wry

DVD Features

• Commentary by director Wolfgang Petersen
• Feautrettes: "Showtime Special: Behind the scenes with the secret service", "How'd The Do That?", "Catching the Counterfeiters"
• Documentary "The Ultimate Sacrifice"
• Deleted scenes

DVD Chapters

• None SpecifiedNone Specified

• 1993--Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Jeff Maguire-Nominee
• 1993--Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, John Malkovich-Nominee
• 1993--British Academy of Film and Television Arts, John Malkovich-Nominee
• 1993--Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Anne V. Coates-Nominee
• 1993--Hollywood Foreign Press Association, John Malkovich-Nominee
• 1993--British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Jeff Maguire-Nominee

Review

Among the American films of German director Wolfgang Peterson, who achieved his international breakthrough with the submarine drama Das Boot (1981), In the Line of Fire may be the most respected and successful. The movie fulfills all the expectations that one might have for an action thriller. Much of the film's success owes to the performances of leads Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich. Eastwood turns in another variation of the loner role that he pioneered in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, but this is an older, mellower Eastwood, who adds more dimensions to his traditionally limited characters. His performance here is in the same weathered vein as his Oscar-winning work in Unforgiven. Malkovich, well-versed in playing demented geniuses, is equally convincing in the more extravagant role of the diabolical, chameleon-like, would-be assassin. ~ Brendon Hanley, Rovi