Film review - In the Line of Fire (1993)

Rating: 7/10

Starring: Clint Eastwood, John Malkovich, Rene Russo, Dylan McDermott, Gary Cole, Fred Dalton Thompson, John Mahoney, Gregory Alan Williams, Jim Curley, Sally Hughes, Tobin Bell, Clyde Kusatsu, Steve Hytner, Patrika Darbo, John Heard, Joshua Malina

Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen

Review: Film review - In the Line of Fire (1993) - Clint Eastwood plays an ageing Special Agent who discovers a plot to kill The President of the United States. John Malkovich plays the Assassin trying to kill him. The film follows the cat and mouse chase as Eastwood tries to prevent Malkovich succeeding. Rene Russo plays the love interest as a fellow special agent detailed to protect the President.

To the problems. First, Eastwoods age, there are several films from this period onwards where Eastwood plays the action man part despite clearly being too old for them. Age doesn't make him a bad actor but he's just not believable as a Secret Service Agent guarding the President. The President would be in serious trouble if he were guarded by 63 year olds! That said the film does to some extent recognise this and indeed at one point has a little fun at his expense. Second, the plot is rather disjointed and jumps about quite a bit, often without purpose which doesn't help. Third, unusually Eastwood is a problem. He's more than a little wooden in this one and quite frankly its hard not to see him as an old Harry Callahan.

All that said, its a little more intelligent than most movies like this and the plot's interesting enough. John Malkovich puts in a good shift as the bad guy and Rene Russo is her usual sultry self. I've rounded it up to a 7.

Ps: The scene where Eastwood and Russo first get together is funny, especially Eastwoods line “Now I've got to put all that shit back on again”

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Line_of_Fire

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107206/

Amazon: Buy it

Trailer: