In the Line of Fire (1993)
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
Veteran Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan is a man haunted by his failure to save President Kennedy while serving protection detail in Dallas. Thirty years later, a man calling himself "Booth" threatens the life of the current President, forcing Horrigan to come back to protection detail to confront the ghosts from his past.
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What critics compared In the Line of Fire to
Thus "In the Line of Fire" joins a great tradition of cat-mouse assassination thrillers, such as "Rogue Male," "The Day of the Jackal," "The Eye of the Needle" and one or two others I could name.
The benchmark for assassination movies is "The Day of the Jackal," Fred Zinnemann's crisp, finely tuned 1973 adaptation of the Frederick Forsyth best seller about a plot to kill Charles de Gaulle.
“London Has Fallen,” the sequel to 2013’s modest hit “Olympus Has Fallen,” finds Butler back as the toughest Secret Service agent since Clint Eastwood’s Frank Horrigan from “In the Line of Fire.”
I'd like to have one of these guilt-driven security guys protecting me: Clint Eastwood in "In The Line of Fire" (1993) who failed to save the life of John F. Kennedy; "Olympus Has Fallen" bodyguard ( Gerard Butler ), who did rescue the president, but not the first lady; Channing Tatum specifically, for every "Sexiest Man Alive" reason, plus his dance-trained agility and his desire to impress and bond with his estranged daughter.
Despite an American accent that goes dodgy on a couple of occasions, he performs capably as the film’s tarnished hero in a role that can’t help but echo Clint Eastwood’s disgraced Secret Service agent in In the Line of Fire.
The film is long on violent action, and generally hews to the emotional ups and downs of the siege genre with a premise not unlike In the Line of Fire, consisting of a prologue, a subsequent set up, a long opening action scene, a lull as the good guys regroup, and then more action as the film climbs to its final confrontation.
“Olympus Has Fallen” has a plot largely lifted from “Air Force One” (minus the plane), while also mixing in bits of “Independence Day” (minus the aliens) and “In the Line of Fire,” with a subplot about a Secret Service agent haunted by a past mistake and determined to successfully protect the president this time.
The movie begins with a riff lifted obliquely from a better thriller than this one, "In the Line of Fire."
Taking a cue from the terrific 1993 Clint Eastwood vehicle “In the Line of Fire,” “Olympus” begins with its hero in disgrace for a dubious call on duty, removed from the president’s view and banished for 18 months to a desk at the Treasury.
Disillusioned either by his past or by his similarity to the Clint Eastwood character from “In the Line of Fire,” he is outside the building when the NoKos roll in.
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Like the John Malkovich freak in "In the Line of Fire," this mad genius is essentially a fun-house mirror image of the film's hero.
Leto’s portrayal is a hybrid of John Malkovich from “In the Line of Fire” and Kevin Spacey from “Seven,” and it’s hard to believe that a filmmaker would allow for such a hammy, gothic performance in an otherwise grounded tale unless it was to serve a purpose.
The bad guy, a dour, dulcet-toned misanthrope who has obviously seen In the Line of Fire, demands that his prey remain on the line at all times.
The killer-on-the-phone thing has, of course, been done before, from When a Stranger Calls to In the Line of Fire to Scream.
His In the Line of Fire (1993) squared off Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich as hero and villain on equal footing, and Air Force One (1997) deftly combined the two: a hero and villain operating within a confined space.
Director Wolfgang Petersen, adept at heart-pounding action ( "The Perfect Storm," "Air Force One," "In the Line of Fire"), guides the battle scenes with a sure hand and a sharp eye for exciting visuals.
In general, stalwart action director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, In the Line of Fire, Air Force One ) goes for a pretty anonymous Big Movie style, with the cameras positioned at all the customary places.
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Based on the novel Point of Impact (by Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Stephen Hunter ), Shooter is a blend of The Fugitive and In the Line of Fire -- with one amusingly outrageous portion of Cliffhanger thrown in because, hey, blood looks really cool when it's splattered all over virgin snow.
We've seen it in "In the Line of Fire" (Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich), "Cliffhanger" (Sylvester Stallone and John Lithgow) and others.