My Favorite Scene: In the Line of Fire

Late in Wolfgang Peterson’s restrained action thriller, In the Line of Fire (which rivals Das Boot as the man’s best film), the movie thankfully, wondrously forgets that it is an action film and delivers a scene of Hitchockian bliss.

The scene in question occurs when everything comes to a head. It’s three weeks before the election and the President is giving a speech at a fundraiser in California, in which Mitch Leary, clad in a convincing yuppie disguise, has a seat front and center.

Up until this point, Leary (played by a never-better John Malkovich) has been honest with the secret service, particularly grizzled, fading agent, Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood), that he soon plans to kill the President. Because Frank’s instincts have been wrong one too many times, his superiors have thrown him off the case. One of the best things about this scene is that it takes place in a Clint Eastwood movie, but has virtually nothing to do with him.

As the President rolls up to the hotel with his armed guard, he soon walks through the lobby, glad handing his supporters with pleasantries, toward the dining hall where his loyal voters eagerly await his arrival. Here, Peterson cross cuts the President’s arrival with Leary’s nonchalant actions in the dining hall. The criminal, sitting amusingly between two women, is shown secretly assembling a handmade plastic gun under the table. His face reads calm and content, while his hands quietly prepare to make history.

And if you stop to think about this for a second, you’ll understand just how brilliant this sequence is.

Once the President enters the dining hall, Leary, nearly done putting his weapon together, accidentally drops one of the two bullets to his gun on the floor.  I recently rewatched this movie, and the second that bullet missed the chamber and fell to the ground, I let out a sharp, “Oh, no, fuck.”

Now, think about that. We’re watching an insane, CIA-trained assassin who is mere seconds away from killing the President. And when that bullet falls, are we revealed? Of course not. We’re rooting for him. We want him to find the bullet. We need him to get that gun ready. Do we want to see him kill the President? I certainly don’t. But we want him to get as close as he possibly can.

Malkovich’s flawless performance is much in part to thank for the audience’s sympathy. His Leary is a charming, wildly intelligent mastermind who is ever evolving. We enjoy watching him squirm, sure. But it’s a hell of a lot more fun watching him get away.

Leary soon finds the bullet and right around the time his gun is fully locked and loaded, In the Line of Fire goes back to being a typical action film. But for nearly two minutes, we find ourselves rooting for the bad guy, all while hoping he gets what’s coming to him. That’s goddamn rare for an American action movie.

Previous installments of My Favorite Scene include:

8 Mile
Babel
Brokeback Mountain
Crash
Fargo
The Godfather
The Godfather Part II
GoodFellas
He Got Game
House of Games
Hustle & Flow
Inception
Insomnia
Leaving Las Vegas
Philadelphia
Platoon
Raging Bull
Redbelt
The Rules of Attraction
Se7en
Sleepers

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