Review of In the Line of Fire

In the Line of Fire is pure 90s action and cheese. Clint East surely a little old to be an active secrete services agent is introduced. A tough pro and a young nervous rookie are paired up. The film is something of a thriller, a bit like Dirty Harry but not quite as good. In this film again a demented killer is on the loose and threating to kill, Eastwood must stop him, start film. The film has huge production values, able to recreate the Whitehouse, there's parades involving thousands of people it looks like, the film really delivers on this aspect. The film does quite early on show us who the terrorist is, I thought they might have held it back a bit longer. The idea though of him being ex-CIA is quite clever, he is often 1 step ahead of the secret service and also a master of disguise and spying. It also gives him a good backstory. Clint Eastwood plays a tough but damaged character with a former alcohol problem. We get some terrible awkward banter with the female love interest character. There's a few bits which didn't make sense to me, the killer it looks like has left a fingerprint on a car, but surely they could have dusted the phone box though for that earlier in the movie? The killer is definitely taunting Eastwood, he takes great risks, there's some pure 90s action cheese too with people jumping over car bonnets, the love story is sort of shoved in there too, almost to tick a box. It gets a bit repetitive with many scenes of the experts trying to trace a phone call, this happens over and over again. It's quite often a game of cat and mouse. The music wasn't for me either, it's very 90s action. There's some not so subtle foreshadowing too over the death of a certain character. It's not looking good for him. Another very silly scene has the caller phone up from the phone box outside the building, I mean come on..... The finale was quite well done. There is a bit of nice subtext about how mad of a job being a secret service agent is, having to literally use you body as a human shield. All in all a bit predictable but quite well acted, big production values, nicely shot film.