A generally smart, adult thriller.

| Original Score: B | Aug 31, 2022

The classic 90s political thriller, complete with an air-tight script for 2+ hours, some great performances and a steady hand from Wolfgang Petersen.

| Jun 25, 2022

This is a picture which I would simply hate to have missed. It is a totally conventional film, but is none the worse for that. A good movie is a series of gloriously foregone conclusions, and Fire is no exception.

| Apr 6, 2022

Perhaps there is a place still for a film like In the Line of Fire. I'm just not sure we have a Clint Eastwood anymore to save America from itself.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 31, 2021

Aside from getting a little too nasty to guarantee audience attention during flat spots, this is a quality political thriller with a few choice personal twists.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 20, 2020

A top-notch thriller, the movie's traditional values concerning classic first-responder, law enforcement, and Secret Service/FBI/CIA-agent hero-types who dutifully put their lives on the line for patriotism remains one of the best examples of the genre.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 12, 2020

John Malkovich plays one of the screen's most memorable and often underrated villains.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 14, 2020

Generously exciting, In the Line of Fire is mercifully free of that artificial energy that makes so many new movies look as if they were created with steroids.

| Jan 29, 2019

...a seriously superior thriller that remains, more than 20 years later, one of the best examples of the genre.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 18, 2016

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, In the Line of Fire builds a palpable tension between the Eastwood and Malkovich characters.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 13, 2014

It just builds, relationship by relationship, detail by detail, clever stroke by clever stroke, taking you in and making you its own. It ought to wear a sign: Danger. Professionals At Work.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 30, 2013

Petersen directs his film in a straightforward, workmanlike fashion-few surprises here -- and, curiously, for most of the film is better at establishing a kind of amiability than a hard tension.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 30, 2013

Director Wolfgang Petersen moves the story along, but his real job is to simply stay out of the way of his two racehorse lead actors. And he does.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 30, 2013

What separates In The Line Of Fire from the rest of the bog-standard good-guy/bad-guy set-up is the clear implication throughout that these two sworn enemies have more in common than they may think.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 30, 2013

Eerie assassin and protector are perfectly balanced in this classy entertainment.

| Jul 30, 2013

Every part of this film trades so heavily on Eastwood's presence that it is impossible to imagine it with anyone else in the starring role.

| Jul 30, 2013

The movie has a clear, simple thriller logic that's far more satisfying than the static variations-on-a-massacre construction of Eastwood's Dirty Harry pictures and spaghetti Westerns.

| Jul 30, 2013

Despite the presence of all these action-flick cliches, In the Line of Fire works. Sure, it's no more than a formula movie, but it's an effective formula movie.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 30, 2013

Preposterous but still thoroughly involving, this tense, kinetic, ingenious thriller is the thinking fan's action movie.

| Jul 30, 2013

How fitting that in this summer of dinosaurs, Clint Eastwood has again emerged as the most interesting thing on screen.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 30, 2013