Has there ever been a more iconic big-screen presence than Clint Eastwood? I’d be hard-pressed to name one, as while others like Sean Connery, Harrison Ford, and maybe Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne – if you go old school – can compare, there’s a lot more to Eastwood than anyone else. How so? Well, while most of his contemporaries were happy just to act in their films, Eastwood became the auteur of his work, directing many of his post-The Outlaw Josey Wales vehicles. When he opted to semi-retire from screen acting, he was able to carry on as a director, and in fact, despite being well into his nineties, he’s still directing movies, with his recent Juror No 2 being a little gem.
However, when In the Line of Fire was made in 1993, Eastwood was at something of a crossroads in his career. For the thirty years prior, starting with the Man With No Name trilogy, and on through his seventies heyday, Eastwood was a superstar leading man, but for awhile he seemed hesitant to acknowledge the fact that he was aging. Around the time he did Heartbreak Ridge in 1986 when he was fifty-five, he got ultra-jacked, even showing up on the covers of muscle magazines, and towards the end of the decade, he made a pair of movies that – unusually for him – whiffed at the box office, despite being in genres he excelled in. One was Pink Cadillac, a road action/comedy in the vein of Every Which Way But Loose, which was such a huge flop in North America that it went direct to video in much of Europe. The other was The Rookie, which was Eastwood’s attempt to make a huge, over-the-top action movie that could compete with what Stallone and Schwarzenegger were putting out. It was a box office disaster – although it’s a fun if weird flick where Eastwood – and I’m not kidding – is actually sexually assaulted at one point by the movie’s female villain, played by Sonia Braga.
However, Eastwood bounced back in a big way with Unforgiven, which acknowledged that he was getting old and served as an elegiac closing chapter to the western part of his career. It was a major hit and won multiple Oscars. But, before it even hit theaters, Eastwood was hard at work on a movie that would put on bow on his career as a contemporary action star in the same way that Unforgiven did for his westerns. That movie would be In the Line of Fire.
Notably, In the Line of Fire would be the rare Clint Eastwood vehicle where he did not produce the film through his Malpaso banner. Instead, he was an actor for hire, with the script, which was written by Jeff Maguire, who had previously written the largely unseen Sylvester Stallone soccer movie Victory, having started a bidding war. Eastwood wasn’t the first choice for the role, with Robert Redford having been the initial choice, and even after he left, Sean Connery was viewed as a potential Frank Harrigan. However, the part suited Eastwood to a tee, with him playing a secret service agent who, in his younger days, was part of the group that failed to protect JFK when he was assassinated, with it haunting him over the next thirty years. He’s targeted by a mad assassin, Mitch Leary, played by John Malkovich, who torments him by promising to kill the new president, daring Frank to try and stop him.
The role was a change of pace for Eastwood at the time. While it still played to his strengths as an action hero, with him blowing away a couple of bad guys right off the bat in a scene that could have been lifted from a Dirty Harry movie, Harrigan is vulnerable, with him a lonely, cynical agent, who, in a quirky character bit, chooses to ride public transit rather than drive a car, and even cries at one point when he remembers having failed Kennedy. In other ways the role fits Clint to a tee, with him still able to perform his own stunts, while Frank has the same kind of aversion to authority Harry Callahan has. He’s also irresistible to women, with him romancing the much younger Rene Russo throughout the movie.
There are many reasons why In the Line of Fire works in my opinion. One is that it has a terrific director in Wolfgang Petersen, who gives the action a scale and edge Eastwood’s Malpaso directors didn’t seem capable of — with a bigger budget than would usually suit the thrifty Eastwood to boot. Peterson also enlists Ennio Morricone to deliver a solid thriller score that’s evocative of his own score for The Untouchables, which is different from the low-key, Jazzy-style Clint used in his own movies – although, of course, Ennio had scored his Leone trilogy.
The cast is also perfect, with Eastwood delivering one of his best performances as the believably human Frank. I think if Redford had played the role, he would have played the part as too much of a charming golden boy. You believe Eastwood is a guy who has gone somewhat to seed. Most importantly, he has amazing chemistry with John Malkovich, who plays the iconically evil Mitch Leary, the psychopath assassin tormenting Frank. One reason they work so well is that – for scenes when they’re speaking by phone, they shot together so they could play off each other in real-time. Malkovich was also prone to improvisation and scene-stealing, something which delighted rather than threatened Eastwood, which as the scene where Frank threatens Mitch with a gun and he bites the barrel. Rene Russo also makes for a tougher-than-usual heroine, with her believable as the very nineties modern woman at odds with Frank’s old-fashioned ways but drawn in by his vulnerability. The many character actors, including John Mahoney, Dylan McDermott, Tobin Bell, and Fred Dalton Thompson add immeasurably to the film, making it feel almost like a sibling of the Jack Ryan thrillers, which were big at the time.
The film was a smash hit, making over $100 million in 1993 dollars, making it one of the year’s biggest hits. It came along at just the right time, as it was released near the 30th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, which was very much in the public zeitgeist thanks to Oliver Stone’s JFK. Eastwood’s career after Unforgiven was in the midst of a huge upswing, and the thriller genre was also red-hot. Perhaps wanting to end his action movie career on a high would be the last time Eastwood would play an action hero. He kept making thrillers, such as Absolute Power and Blood Work, but they would be more character-based and lower-key than this. That said, it’s been thirty-two years since this came out, and he’s still going strong.
