
Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) is a Secret Service Agent who keeps thinking back to November 22, 1963, when, as a hand-picked Agent by President John F. Kennedy, he became one of the few Agents to have lost a President to an assassin when Kennedy died. Now, former C.I.A. assassin Mitch Leary (John Malkovich) is stalking the current President (Jim Curley), who is running for re-election. Mitch has spent long hours studying Horrigan, and he taunts Horrigan, telling him of his ... (Full plot summary below)
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Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) is a Secret Service Agent who keeps thinking back to November 22, 1963, when, as a hand-picked Agent by President John F. Kennedy, he became one of the few Agents to have lost a President to an assassin when Kennedy died. Now, former C.I.A. assassin Mitch Leary (John Malkovich) is stalking the current President (Jim Curley), who is running for re-election. Mitch has spent long hours studying Horrigan, and he taunts Horrigan, telling him of his plans to kill the President. Leary plans to kill the President because Leary feels betrayed by the government. Leary was removed from the C.I.A., and the C.I.A. is now trying to have him killed. After talking to Leary, Horrigan makes sure he is assigned to Presidential protection duty, working with fellow Secret Service Agent Lilly Raines (Rene Russo). Horrigan has no intention of failing his President this time around, and he's more than willing to take a bullet. White House Chief of Staff Harry Sargent (Fred Dalton Thompson) refuses to alter the President's itinerary, while Horrigan's boss, Secret Service Director Sam Campagna (John Mahoney), is supportive of Horrigan. As the election gets closer, Horrigan begins to doubt his own abilities, especially when Horrigan's colleague Al D'Andrea (Dylan McDermott) is killed by Leary. But Horrigan may be the only one who can stop Leary.
Leave your thoughts about In the Line of Fire.
| Flipside Movie EmporiumRob VauxSolid and well-crafted; neither Eastwood nor Petersen has been quite as good since. |
| The New York TimesVincent CanbyIt's movie making of the high, smooth, commercial order that Hollywood prides itself on but achieves with singular infrequency. |
| Empire MagazineBarry McIlheneyWhat separates In The Line Of Fire from the rest of the bog-standard good-guy/bad-guy set-up is the clear implication throughout that these two sworn enemies have more in common than they may think. |
| Reel Film ReviewsDavid Nusair...a seriously superior thriller that remains, more than 20 years later, one of the best examples of the genre. |
| NewsweekDavid AnsenGenerously exciting, In the Line of Fire is mercifully free of that artificial energy that makes so many new movies look as if they were created with steroids. |
| Baltimore SunStephen HunterIt just builds, relationship by relationship, detail by detail, clever stroke by clever stroke, taking you in and making you its own. It ought to wear a sign: Danger. Professionals At Work. |
| People MagazineRalph NovakPreposterous but still thoroughly involving, this tense, kinetic, ingenious thriller is the thinking fan's action movie. |
| Philadelphia InquirerCarrie RickeyBetween them, director Petersen and screenwriter Jeff Maguire do a memorable job developing their characters in this story of personal and professional redemption. |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThe director is Wolfgang Petersen ("Das Boot"), who is able to unwind the plot like clockwork while at the same time establishing the characters as surprisingly sympathetic. |
| Chicago TribuneGene SiskelDirector Wolfgang Petersen moves the story along, but his real job is to simply stay out of the way of his two racehorse lead actors. And he does. |