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In the Line of Fire

1993 political action thriller film by Wolfgang Petersen From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the Line of Fire
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For other uses, see In the Line of Fire (disambiguation).

In the Line of Fire is a 1993 American political action thriller film directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starring Clint Eastwood, John Malkovich and Rene Russo.[4] Written by Jeff Maguire, the film is about a disillusioned and obsessed former CIA agent who plans to assassinate the President of the United States and the Secret Service agent who is tracking him. Eastwood's character is the sole remaining active-duty Secret Service agent from the detail that was guarding John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas at the time of his assassination in 1963. The film also stars Dylan McDermott, Gary Cole, John Mahoney, and Fred Dalton Thompson.

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In the Line of Fire was co-produced by Columbia Pictures and Castle Rock Entertainment, with Columbia handling distribution. The film was a critical and commercial success. It grossed $187 million against a $40 million production budget and earned three nominations at the 66th Academy Awards.

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Plot

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Secret Service agents, Frank Horrigan and Al D'Andrea, meet with members of a counterfeiting group at a marina. The group's leader, Mendoza, tells Horrigan that he has identified D'Andrea as an undercover agent, and forces Horrigan to prove his loyalty by putting a gun to D'Andrea's head and pulling the trigger. When the gun just clicks, Horrigan then shoots and kills Mendoza's men, identifies himself as a United States Secret Service agent, and arrests Mendoza.

Horrigan investigates a complaint from a landlady about an apartment's absent tenant, Joseph McCrawley. He finds a collage of photographs and newspaper articles on famous assassinations, a model-building magazine, and a Time cover with the President's head, on which a gunsight-crosshairs has been drawn in red marker. When Horrigan and D'Andrea return with a search warrant, only one photograph remains, which shows a much younger Horrigan (with his face circled in red) standing behind John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, on the day Kennedy is assassinated. Horrigan is the only remaining active agent who was guarding the President that day, and is wracked with guilt over his failure to react quickly enough to the first shot to shield Kennedy from the subsequent fatal bullet. The guilt drove Horrigan to drink excessively, and his family left him.

Horrigan receives a phone call from McCrawley, who calls himself "Booth". He tells Horrigan that, like John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, he plans to kill the President of the United States, who is running for reelection and is making many public appearances around the country. Horrigan, despite his age, asks to return to the Presidential Protective Division, where he begins a relationship with fellow agent, Lilly Raines.

McCrawley, posing as Jim Carney, opens an account with Southwest Savings Bank of Los Angeles, intending to use the account to make campaign contributions. When a bank employee named Pam seems suspicious, he follows her to her home and murders her, and her roommate, Sally.

Booth continues to call Horrigan as part of his "game," even though he knows that his calls are being traced. He mocks Horrigan's failure to protect Kennedy but calls him a "friend." Booth escapes Horrigan and D'Andrea after one such call from Lafayette Park, but inadvertently leaves a palm print on a passing car. The Federal Bureau of Investigation matches the print, but because the person's identity is classified, the agency cannot disclose it to the Secret Service. The FBI does notify the Central Intelligence Agency.

At a campaign event in Chicago, Booth pops a decorative balloon. Horrigan, who is groggy from the flu, mistakes the pop for a gunshot and overreacts. Because of the error, he is removed from the protective detail by White House Chief of Staff Harry Sargent and head of security detail, Bill Watts, but retains the Booth case. Horrigan and D'Andrea follow a lead from the model-building magazine to a Phoenix home belonging to Mitch Leary. Upon entering, the two agents subdue an unknown individual, revealed to be a CIA agent working with Leary's associate. The CIA reveals that “McCrawley” is a pseudonym used by Leary, a former agency assassin who suffered a mental breakdown and is now a "predator," seeking revenge on his former masters. Leary, who has already killed several people as he prepares for the assassination, uses his model-making skills to mould a zip gun out of composite material to evade metal detectors.

D'Andrea confides to Horrigan that he plans to leave the Secret Service immediately because of nightmares about the Mendoza incident, but Horrigan dissuades him from doing so. After Leary taunts Horrigan about the President facing danger in California, Horrigan and D'Andrea chase him across Washington rooftops, where Leary shoots and kills D'Andrea but saves Horrigan from falling to his death as he clings to the side of the building. Horrigan asks Raines to reassign him to the protective detail when the President visits Los Angeles, but a television crew films him mistaking a bellboy at the hotel for a security threat, and Watts and Sargent again force Horrigan to leave the detail.

Horrigan connects Leary to Pam's murder and determines that Leary, who has made several large campaign contributions, is among the guests at a campaign dinner at the hotel. He sees the President approaching Leary and jumps into the path of the assassin's bullet, saving the President's life. As the Secret Service quickly removes the President, Leary uses Horrigan, who is wearing a bulletproof vest, as a hostage to escape in the hotel's glass elevator. Horrigan uses his earpiece to tell Raines and sharpshooters where to aim; although they miss Leary, Horrigan defeats him in hand-to-hand combat, leaving him hanging from the edge. Though Horrigan offers to pull him up to safety, declaring that he would only save him because it's his job, Leary ultimately commits suicide by letting go and falling to his death.

Upon returning home to Washington, and now a widely publicized hero, Horrigan announces his retirement. Horrigan shows Raines into his apartment, where an unexpected farewell message from Leary is found on Horrigan's answering machine. They play the message, in which Leary begins to commend Horrigan on his character, but Horrigan and Raines leave the apartment before the message ends. The film ends with Horrigan and Raines enjoying a romantic interlude at the Lincoln Memorial, where they had previously shared a moment together.

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Cast

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Production

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The climax of the film occurs at the Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles

Producer Jeff Apple began developing In the Line of Fire in the mid-1980s. He had planned on making a movie about a Secret Service Agent on detail during the Kennedy assassination since his boyhood. Apple was inspired and intrigued by a vivid early childhood memory of meeting Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in person, surrounded by Secret Service Agents with earpieces in dark suits and sunglasses. The concept later struck Apple as an adolescent watching televised replays of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

After another writer's efforts fell short,[5] Jeff Maguire came aboard in 1991 and completed the script that would become the movie.[6] Disney rejected a treatment for television starring Tom Selleck, and after a bidding war Castle Rock Entertainment bought the script for $1.4 million in April 1992.[5][7]

Clint Eastwood and Wolfgang Petersen offered the role of Leary to Robert De Niro, who turned it down due to scheduling conflicts with A Bronx Tale.[8]

Filming began in late 1992 in Washington, D.C.[1] Scenes in the White House were filmed on an existing set, while an Air Force One interior set had to be built at a cost of $250,000.[1] The film's climactic scenes were shot inside the lobby and elevators of the Los Angeles Bonaventure Hotel, while earlier scenes of Frank and Lilly sharing intimate moments were filmed in the nearby Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel.

A subplot of the film is the President's re-election campaign. For the scenes of campaign rallies, the filmmakers used digitally altered footage from the campaign events of President George H. W. Bush and then-Governor Bill Clinton.[1][2][9]

The movie also inserted digitized images from 1960s Clint Eastwood movies into the Kennedy assassination scenes. As Jeff Apple described it to the Los Angeles Times, Eastwood "gets the world's first digital haircut".[2]

The Secret Service cooperated with the production. An agency public affairs official said, "the project would have been done anyway ... We decided that it would be better for us to have some kind of control".[9] The agency did not cooperate with contemporary films Dave and Guarding Tess, describing the former as "whimsical".[10] For In the Line of Fire, in addition to helping the second unit filming of the Bush and Clinton campaigns, Secret Service agents on the set helped scenes' authenticity. The agency concluded that "the project has been a great success. The Secret Service was able to ... make certain that our portrayal on the big screen was a positive one", and hoped that it would help in recruiting akin to "what Top Gun did for the Navy". Retired Assistant Director of the Secret Service Robert R. Snow said, "It's a story told through the eyes of an agent, his problems, and his experiences".[9]

In an interview with Larry King, President Bill Clinton praised the film. Unsure if this endorsement would help or hurt the film, Petersen decided against using his quotes to market the film.[11][12]

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Release

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In the Line of Fire was released in United States theaters in July 1993. It was one of the first films to have a trailer for the film made available online. Offered via AOL, the trailer was downloaded 170 times in a week and a half.[13]

Box office

The film earned $15 million in its opening weekend.[14] It earned over $102 million in North America and $85 million in other territories, for a total of $187,343,874 worldwide,[3] against a budget of approximately $40 million.[2]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, In the Line of Fire has a 96% rating based on 73 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's consensus states: "A straightforward thriller of the highest order, In the Line of Fire benefits from Wolfgang Petersen's taut direction and charismatic performances from Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich."[15] On Metacritic, it has a score of 74 out of 100 based on reviews from 16.[16] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[17]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: "It's movie making of the high, smooth, commercial order that Hollywood prides itself on but achieves with singular infrequency."[18] Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half out of four, writing: "Most thrillers these days are about stunts and action. In the Line of Fire has a mind."[19]

Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called the film "crisply entertaining". He praised the casting, "Malkovich’s insinuating, carefully thought out delivery is in the same way an ideal foil for Eastwood’s bluntly straightforward habits", and Eastwood "every part of this film trades so heavily on Eastwood’s presence that it is impossible to imagine it with anyone else in the starring role".[6][20]

Accolades

66th Academy Awards

47th BAFTA Awards

  • Nominated: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (John Malkovich)
  • Nominated: Best Editing (Anne V. Coates)
  • Nominated: Best Original Screenplay (Jeff Maguire)

Other awards

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Novelization

A novelization of the film was published by Jove Books. Author Max Allan Collins wrote the book in nine days.[21]

References

Bibliography

External links

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