In the Line of Fire is a perfectly acceptable and thrilling game of political cat-and-mouse between Clint and John Malkovich, the script and technical experience impressed me for a 90’s action flick and through that and some great performances from those two names it managed to enter the upper half of my favorite Clint movies which I really didn’t expect. It’s almost a version of the political thrillers like White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen except everything about it is more entertaining than those movies, the acting, the writing, just everything here while using some of the same cliches is a noticeable step-up. As far as the acting goes this is definitely a new favorite Clint role of mine, he’s not doing too much here but the one-liners are some of the best of his career and the actual role is so perfectly suited to him, I thought I might be getting something similar to City Heat here where he just phoned it in for the action flick check but I was happy to see he brought his all to this and even happier that it worked so well. Next to him despite how much I liked Rene Russo the obvious standout is Mr. Malkovich, I haven’t seen him in all that much to this point, I think the role of his most memorable to me before this was Deepwater Horizon and while he was good there I was ashamed to not fully understand why so many call him so great, this role though, while the character itself isn’t anything amazing, gives me that exact insight to his talent I was itching for and makes me a lot more excited to see his performance in the upcoming Wild Horse Nine. If you’ve seen the movies I was comparing this to, those being White House Down and/or Olympus Has Fallen, you know while the movies are fun they don’t leave you with much to talk about, it’s a damn good thriller with a fun concept, a solid script, and decent enough filmmaking and that covers all the bases needed to make great action movie.
In the Line of Fire is a perfectly acceptable and thrilling game of political cat-and-mouse between Clint and John Malkovich, the script and technical experience impressed me for a 90’s action flick and through that and some great performances from those two names it managed to enter the upper half of my favorite Clint movies which I really didn’t expect. It’s almost a version of the political thrillers like White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen except everything about it is more entertaining than those movies, the acting, the writing, just everything here while using some of the same cliches is a noticeable step-up. As far as the acting goes this is definitely a new favorite Clint role of mine, he’s not doing too much here but the one-liners are some of the best of his career and the actual role is so perfectly suited to him, I thought I might be getting something similar to City Heat here where he just phoned it in for the action flick check but I was happy to see he brought his all to this and even happier that it worked so well. Next to him despite how much I liked Rene Russo the obvious standout is Mr. Malkovich, I haven’t seen him in all that much to this point, I think the role of his most memorable to me before this was Deepwater Horizon and while he was good there I was ashamed to not fully understand why so many call him so great, this role though, while the character itself isn’t anything amazing, gives me that exact insight to his talent I was itching for and makes me a lot more excited to see his performance in the upcoming Wild Horse Nine. If you’ve seen the movies I was comparing this to, those being White House Down and/or Olympus Has Fallen, you know while the movies are fun they don’t leave you with much to talk about, it’s a damn good thriller with a fun concept, a solid script, and decent enough filmmaking and that covers all the bases needed to make great action movie.
