Whenever I watch
Air Force One, I always follow it up with another of Wolfgang Petersen's movie:
In The Line Of Fire. Where
Air Force One is a Action Adventure in every sense of the word,
In The Line Of Fire is a straight up Thriller. It's a cat and mouse game as
Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) is hot on the trail of
Mitch Leary (John Malkovich), the man who has sworn to kill the
President Of The United States. The plot isn't original by having an Agent chasing after an assassin. But they do had a nice twist to the story by having
Horrigan as an Agent who also served under
JFK and placing him at
Dealey Plaza on that fateful day.
As good as
Eastwood is in this and he was magnificent here, it's
Malkovich who steals every scene he is in. I was so impressed with his performance when I saw this in the theater that I was 100% certain he would an
Oscar for
Best Supporting Actor for his performance. He was amazing here and gave us one of the better villain's Hollywood has ever produced. I did and still do think that the
Academy dropped the ball by not nominated
Eastwood for his role. Bonus points for
Rene Russo as another Agent working with
Horrigan. This week has turned out to be
Rene Russo week and I am 100% happy with that. Me love her long time!!

The movie looks and sounds great and it still has one of the primes examples of film editing to this day. The entire run up to the moment of truth where
Horrigan throws himself in front of the assassin's bullet is exactly how you edit for suspense. I highly recommend this as a
Buy.