In the Line of Fire

Secret Service Agents Frank Horrigan and Al D'Andrea meet with members of a counterfeiting group at a marina. The group's leader, Mendoza, tells Horrigan that he has identified D'Andrea as an undercover agent, and forces him to prove his loyalty by putting a gun to D'Andrea's head and pulling the trigger. When the gun just clicks, Horrigan then shoots and kills Mendoza's men, identifies himself as an agent, and arrests him.

Horrigan investigates a complaint from a landlady about an apartment's absent tenant, Joseph McCrawley. He finds a collage of photographs and newspaper articles on famous assassinations, a model-building magazine, and a Time cover with the President's head circled. When Horrigan and D' Andrea return with a search warrant, only one photograph remains, which shows a much younger Horrigan standing behind John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. Horrigan is the only remaining active agent who was guarding the President that day, and he is wracked with guilt over his failure to react quickly enough to the first shot, shielding Kennedy from the subsequent fatal bullet, which could have saved the President's life. This guilt drove Horrigan to drink excessively; and eventually his family left him.

Horrigan receives a phone call from McCrawley, who calls himself "Booth". He tells Horrigan that, like John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, he plans to kill the President, who is running for reelection and is making many public appearances around the country. Horrigan, despite his age, asks to return to the Presidential Protective Detail, where he begins a relationship with fellow agent Lilly Raines.

Booth continues to call Horrigan as part of his "game," even though he knows that his calls are being traced. He mocks Horrigan's failure to protect Kennedy but calls him a "friend". Booth escapes Horrigan and D'Andrea after one such call from Lafayette Park, but unknowingly leaves fingerprints in the process. The FBI matches the prints, but because the person's identity is classified, they cannot disclose it to the Secret Service. The FBI does notify the CIA.

At a campaign event in Chicago, Booth pops a decorative balloon. Horrigan, who has a cold, mistakes the pop for a gunshot. Because of this error, he is removed from the protective detail by White House Chief of Staff Harry Sargent and head of security detail Bill Watts, but he is left in charge of the Booth case. Horrigan and D'Andrea learn from the CIA that Booth is Mitch Leary, a former assassin who has suffered a mental breakdown and is now a "predator". Leary, who has already killed several people as he prepares for the assassination, uses his model-making skills to build a zip gun out of composite material to evade metal detectors and hides the bullets and springs in a rabbits foot keyring.

D'Andrea confides to Horrigan that he is going to retire immediately because of nightmares about the Mendoza incident, but Horrigan is able to dissuade him from doing so. After Leary taunts Horrigan about the President facing danger in California, Horrigan and D' Andrea chase him across Washington rooftops, where Leary shoots and kills D'Andrea but saves Horrigan from falling to his death as he clings to the side of the building. Horrigan asks Raines to reassign him to the protective detail when the President visits Los Angeles, but a television crew films him mistaking a bellboy at the hotel for a security threat, and Watts and Sargent once again force Horrigan to leave the detail.

Horrigan connects Leary to a bank employee's murder and determines that Leary, who has made a large campaign contribution, is among the guests at a campaign dinner at the hotel. He sees the President approaching Leary and jumps into the path of the assassin's bullet, saving the President's life. As the Secret Service quickly removes the President, Leary uses Horrigan – who is wearing a bulletproof vest – as a hostage to escape to the hotel's external elevator. Horrigan uses his earpiece to tell Raines and sharpshooters where to aim; although they miss Leary, Horrigan defeats him, leaving him hanging from the edge. Though Horrigan attempts to save him, Leary commits suicide by letting go and falling to his death.

Horrigan, now a hero, retires, as his fame makes it impossible for him to do his job. He and Raines find a farewell message from Leary on Horrigan's answering machine. Horrigan and Raines leave the apartment and visit the Lincoln Memorial the site of the first time they had gotten together off-duty.

Producer Jeff Apple began developing In the Line of Fire in the mid-1980s. He had planned on making a movie about a Secret Service Agent on detail during the Kennedy assassination since his boyhood. Apple was inspired and intrigued by a vivid early childhood memory of meeting Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in person, surrounded by Secret Service Agents with earpieces in dark suits and sunglasses. The concept later struck Apple as an adolescent watching televised replays of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1991, writer Jeff Maguire came aboard and completed the script that would become the movie.[4]

Filming began in late 1992 in Washington, D.C.[1] Scenes in the White House were filmed on an existing set, while an Air Force One interior set had to be built at a cost of $250,000.[1]

A subplot of the film is the President's re-election campaign. For the scenes of campaign rallies, the filmmakers used digitally altered footage from the campaign events of President George H.W. Bush and then-Governor Bill Clinton.[1]

The movie also inserted digitized images from 1960s Clint Eastwood movies into the Kennedy assassination scenes. As Jeff Apple described it to the Los Angeles Times, Clint "gets the world's first digital haircut".[5]

In the Line of Fire was released in United States theaters in July 1993. It was one of the first films to have a trailer for the film made available online. Offered via AOL, the trailer was downloaded 170 times in a week and a half.[6]

Citations

Bibliography

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• In the Line of Fire at IMDb
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