Amazon.com essential video: This smart, tautly directed thriller from Wolfgang Petersen is about the cat-and-mouse games between a Secret Service agent named Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) and the brilliant, psychopathic assassin (John Malkovich) who's itching to get the President in his cross hairs. The back-story--Horrigan is haunted by his inability to prevent John Kennedy's assassination (Eastwood is computer-generated into archival footage)--is more than a little hokey, but the plotting itself is smartly, even ingeniously, constructed. Petersen manages a viselike grip on the tension and Eastwood even gets to deliver an ever-more-timely lecture on the diminished nature of the office of President. Eastwood's as gruff and as infuriating to the by-the-book Powers That Be as ever, and Malkovich oozes delightful menace. Renee Russo capably costars as a colleague with whom Horrigan gets friendly. --David Kronke
Movie: 4/5 Picture Quality: 3.25~4.25/5 Sound Quality: 4/5 Extras: 2.25/5 Version: U.S.A / Region Free Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 MPEG-4 AVC BD-50 Running time: 2:08:36 Movie size: 35,30 GB Disc size: 39,52 GB Total bit rate: 36.61 Mbps Average Video bit rate : 24.95 Mbps
Audio Formats
* English 1435Kbps (48kHz/16-bit) / French / Portuguese Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround * Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Subtitles/Captions
English / English SDH / Bahasa / Chinese (Mandarin) Chinese (Simplified) / Korean / Dutch / French Portuguese (Brazilian) / Spanish (Latin American)
# Audio Commentary # The Ultimate Sacrifice (SD, 22 minutes) # Behind the Scenes with the Secret Service (SD, 20 minutes) # Catching Counterfeiters (SD, 5 minutes) # How'd They Do That (SD, 5 minutes) # Deleted Scenes (SD, 5 minutes)
Malkovich at his best! Though the first billing of this show was Clint Eastwood, John Malkovich was the real star deservedly earning himself the Best Supporting Actor nomination. No offence to Mr Landau's impeccable performance in Ed Wood but I bet the Oscars are going to do the same to Malkovich some time when he's a senior too. It's your usual run-after-the-bad-guy thriller but Malkovich's evil portrayal of the screwed up assassin maniac will keep you watching, even if you know he's going to die in the end (typically Hollywood!). He's a bad guy you love to hate and though he's supposed to be the evil one, you can't help but like him simply coz he's just so evil, you know like Alan Rickman in Robin Hood or Gary Oldman in Dracula. Brilliant movie for both guys and gals to watch together.
The film pits Secret Service Agent Frank Horrigan against the evil Mitch Leary in a game of cat and smarter cat as Leary taunts Horrigan with his plans to take out the President of the United States. Horrigan is haunted by memories of his days with President Kennedy and blames himself for Kennedy's death, so Leary plays off of these fears in order to drive Horrigan to the brink of insanity, causing him to lose the respect and trust of the men and women around him.
Is Horrigan willing to take a bullet for the President?
The film gradually builds to the dramatic conclusion that actually ruins the film for me. I actually enjoyed the vocal toying of Leary to Horrigan, but when the two finally come face to face the film feels as if it gets derailed. I think this is largely due to the fact that Malkovich starts to overact (drastically) and his menacing mannerisms come off cheesy and overdone. I usually like him, but this was a messy performance. Until this scene he does a decent job of delivering the underlying menace in his characters eyes, but here he just goes out there and the result is less than impressive (seriously, Oscar nomination?).
In the end `In the Line of Fire' is not a `bad' film, but it is not a great one either. It will suffice if you want a decent thriller than entertains for the most part, but it is not very original, the character development is mediocre and the acting is sub par. In other words; you can do much better than this so you might as well look elsewhere.
In The Line Of Fire This is a fun movie that has stood up to the test of time. Great chemistry between Eastwood and Russo and it is an intelligent thriller. It is a very nice blu ray transfer.
Eastwood & Malkovich engage in cat and mouse Clint Eastwood came out of a creative slump in the '90s when he won Oscars for "The Unforgiven" and followed it up with this intriguing thriller directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Clint plays a veteran Secret Service agent who latches on to a plot involving the assasination of the President by discovering the identity of the assasin (John Malkovich). Malkovich is in game form here and he meshes well with Eastwood in their cat and mouse exchanges (some really great dialogue, rare in movies today, is employed here). Eastwood, while not a great actor, is in fine form here and the scene between him & Rene Russo in the Presidential suite with him reminscing about that fateful day in '63 is Clint at his best, acting-wise. Malkovich, of course, walked off with an Oscar nod for his role as an disenchanted government assasin and the supporting roles are filled nicely by Dylan McDermott as Clint's ill-fated partner, John Mahoney as a good friend, Gary Cole as a by the book agent and Fred Dalton Thompson as the President's press secretary. So if you're an Eastwood fan and love thrillers, do check this one out (I may purchase this on blu-ray as well).
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