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Clint Eastwood modified his taciturn tough-guy image to play a vulnerable, tormented Secret Service agent in this well-written, proficient 1993 thriller directed by Wolfgang Petersen (The Perfect Storm). In the Line of Fire casts Clint as Frank Horrigan, a veteran agent still haunted by his failure to protect President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and fearful that he won't be equal to a similar challenge to the current president's safety. That fear is exploited by professional assassin Mitch Leary (John Malkovich in one of his best screen characterizations), who plans to kill the prez and calls Frank periodically to taunt him. Rene Russo is excellent as a crisply efficient female agent, but it's the onscreen duel between Eastwood and Malkovich that provides Fire's sizzle. Clint makes Frank Horrigan a fully rounded character, displaying humor, imagination, determination, and painful awareness of his own limitations. Malkovich, likewise, plays Leary in three dimensions. His deliciously psychopathic villain -- a brilliant but ruthless killer with a twisted sense of humor -- is in the mold of Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs). This well-made thriller tingles with carefully calibrated suspense, but it's those lead performances that distinguish it from ordinary entries in this genre. The DVD Special Edition includes a commentary by Petersen, a Showtime-produced documentary on the Secret Service, deleted scenes, trailers, and TV spots. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

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

Product Details

• UPC: 043396258754
• Source: SONY PICTURES
• Region Code: ABC
• Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English, Français, Portugais, Español
• Subtitles: English, Français, Español, Portugais, Arabic, Korean
• Time: 2:08:00
• Sales Rank: 27,095

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Wolfgang Petersen Collection

Features: