In the Line of Fire

Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan couldn’t save Kennedy, but he’s determined not to let a clever assassin take out this president.

• Director:Wolfgang Petersen
• Genre:Drama / Thriller
• Runtime:129 minutes

Cast

Clint Eastwood : Secret Service Agent Frank Horrigan
John Malkovich : Mitch Leary
Rene Russo : Secret Service Agent Lilly Raines
Dylan McDermott: Secret Service Agent Al D’Andrea
Gary Cole : Secret Service Presidential Detail Agent-In-Charge Bill Watts

The story begins in Washington D.C., where Frank Horrigan, an aging Secret Service Agent, joins his new partner, Al D’Andrea, on assignment. They travel to a boating marina to meet with members of a counterfeiting ring. While Frank inspects a phony bill, the group’s leader, Mendoza (Tobin Bell), tells Frank that he has identified Al as a Secret Service agent. (The Secret Service’s original mission was to track down counterfeiters and they continue in this capacity to this day.) Frank joins Mendoza on his boat where they have bound Al to a chair. Frank is forced to show his loyalty by putting a gun to Al’s head and pulling the trigger. The gun is empty (a fact that Frank was able to determine while hefting the weapon) and one of Mendoza’s thugs slips a plastic bag over Al’s head. Frank shoots Mendoza’s thugs, frees Al, and shows his badge, telling Mendoza he’s under arrest.

Frank investigates a complaint from an elderly landlady about one of her tenants. Frank finds a shrine of sorts to famous assassinations. Later, when Frank and Al acquire a search warrant and enter the man’s apartment they discover that the pictures in the shrine have vanished and only one remains: a much younger Frank standing behind John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.

Frank receives a phone call the next evening from a man who insists Frank call him “Booth” after Abraham Lincoln’s assassin. The caller admires Booth because he had “flair, panache.” He tells Frank that he plans to kill the current president. The man also seems to know a great deal of Frank’s history as a Secret Service agent. Frank reports the call to his superiors and an investigation is opened.

In a side story, Frank starts an initially-prickly relationship with another agent, Lilly Raines. She helps him get on protection detail for the President, a duty Frank hasn’t had for years and for which, because of his age, he is out of shape.

Frank’s sleuthing reveals that Booth is actually a man named Mitch Leary, a former CIA operative (a “wetboy”) who has suffered a mental breakdown and is now a psychotic killer. Leary turns out to be incredibly resourceful; he opens a fake bank account in Los Angeles and is a master of disguise. He is also proficient at gunsmithing and builds a composite (i.e. non-metallic, in this case) zip gun with the bullets hidden in a key chain, so as not to set off any alarms at security gates. Read more

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