John Malkovich is convincingly creepy and vicious in his role as an assassin turned maniac who wants to kill the president. Next to him, Clint Eastwood is a secret service man who failed to protect JFK. Their demons drive this excellent film, which is convincing and very involving.

It's an excellent movie and first class entertainment.

Version: U.S.A / Region Free
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
MPEG-4 AVC BD-50
Running time: 2:08:36
Movie size: 35,30 GB
Disc size: 39,52 GB
Total bit rate: 36.61 Mbps
Average Video bit rate : 24.95 Mbps

Audio Formats

* English 1435Kbps (48kHz/16-bit) / French / Portuguese Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround
* Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround

Subtitles/Captions

English / English SDH / Bahasa / Chinese (Mandarin)
Chinese (Simplified) / Korean / Dutch / French
Portuguese (Brazilian) / Spanish (Latin American)

# Audio Commentary
# The Ultimate Sacrifice (SD, 22 minutes)
# Behind the Scenes with the Secret Service (SD, 20 minutes)
# Catching Counterfeiters (SD, 5 minutes)
# How'd They Do That (SD, 5 minutes)
# Deleted Scenes (SD, 5 minutes)

Though the first billing of this show was Clint Eastwood, John Malkovich was the real star deservedly earning himself the Best Supporting Actor nomination. No offence to Mr Landau's impeccable performance in Ed Wood but I bet the Oscars are going to do the same to Malkovich some time when he's a senior too. It's your usual run-after-the-bad-guy thriller but Malkovich's evil portrayal of the screwed up assassin maniac will keep you watching, even if you know he's going to die in the end (typically Hollywood!). He's a bad guy you love to hate and though he's supposed to be the evil one, you can't help but like him simply coz he's just so evil, you know like Alan Rickman in Robin Hood or Gary Oldman in Dracula. Brilliant movie for both guys and gals to watch together.

I won't deny that parts of this film work, very well at that, but in the end `In the Line of Fire' comes off rather generic, without much differentiating it from the masses of similar films shoveled out to us on a regular basis. The acting is decent at best, at time even horrid, and the scripting (which is really the films saving grace) tends to fall into clichéd territory more often than not. Sure, it is exciting and in parts is delivers just what we're looking for, but to be honest there are many other films that hit their mark much greater than this one.

The film pits Secret Service Agent Frank Horrigan against the evil Mitch Leary in a game of cat and smarter cat as Leary taunts Horrigan with his plans to take out the President of the United States. Horrigan is haunted by memories of his days with President Kennedy and blames himself for Kennedy's death, so Leary plays off of these fears in order to drive Horrigan to the brink of insanity, causing him to lose the respect and trust of the men and women around him.

Is Horrigan willing to take a bullet for the President?

The film gradually builds to the dramatic conclusion that actually ruins the film for me. I actually enjoyed the vocal toying of Leary to Horrigan, but when the two finally come face to face the film feels as if it gets derailed. I think this is largely due to the fact that Malkovich starts to overact (drastically) and his menacing mannerisms come off cheesy and overdone. I usually like him, but this was a messy performance. Until this scene he does a decent job of delivering the underlying menace in his characters eyes, but here he just goes out there and the result is less than impressive (seriously, Oscar nomination?).

The acting is decent, like I said. Clint is effective for the most part but his gruff demeanor tends to take away from the emotional pain burrowing beneath his surface. I don't see a reason for Rene Russo's character to exist. She was the worst part of the script (total cliché) and her performance is far less than becoming. Dylan McDermott has a nice part in the beginning; too bad he was used to little.

In the end `In the Line of Fire' is not a `bad' film, but it is not a great one either. It will suffice if you want a decent thriller than entertains for the most part, but it is not very original, the character development is mediocre and the acting is sub par. In other words; you can do much better than this so you might as well look elsewhere.

This is a fun movie that has stood up to the test of time. Great chemistry between Eastwood and Russo and it is an intelligent thriller. It is a very nice blu ray transfer.