In The Line Of Fire [HD]

Eastwood Vs. Malkovich, with the President in the Middle...
Clint Eastwood, in his first film after completing his masterpiece, UNFORGIVEN, chose a winner with Wolfgang Petersen's suspenseful IN THE LINE OF FIRE. As 30-year veteran Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, Eastwood had the misfortune of protecting President Kennedy, November 22, 1963, and the specter of not reacting quickly enough has never fully left him, through the subsequent years. At the other end of the spectrum is ex-CIA assassin Mitch Leary (brilliantly portrayed by John Malkovich), who had become 'excess baggage' for the intelligence community, due to budget cuts. After surviving a bungled attempt to kill him, Leary decides to vent his rage at his 'betrayal' by assassinating the President. In his research, he discovers that the only agent still active from the 1963 team is Horrigan, and, deciding they shared a kinship, he begins to tease Horrigan with clues about himself, and how he'll kill the President.

The film builds up a 'head of steam' from the very first scene, as...

Secret Service Gets Boost from Eastwood
This review refers to the Special Edition DVD(Columbia)......

He was there when Kennedy was assassinated. It still haunts him 30 years later. If he had moved a fraction of a second sooner he may have saved his beloved president, But a what cost to him? He is Frank Horrigan(Eastwood), an aging Secret Service Agent, trained to do whatever it takes to protect the President of the United States. Now he has a chance to redeem himself in his own eyes.
A psychotic, but very clever, would be presidental assassin is on the loose. He calls himself Booth(Malkovich), (Because Booth had so much more "panache" then Oswald). He taunts Horrigan about the day Kennedy is shot, through phone calls. Lets him know that he intends to assassinate the president,even if it means dying himself, and taking Frank with him.
Frank does everything he can to track down this killer and save the president. Most of the other agents feel Frank is too old to keep up the pace of the Presidental...

In the Line of Fire on Blu Ray
Individual plot summaries of these movies can be found everywhere as well as opinions on the plots, acting and actors so I will focus only on the quality of the transfer of this movie to Blu Ray.

In the Line of Fire was shot some time ago but still has legs as an intriguing and suspenseful film. This Blu Ray came only with the one Blu Ray disc.

The video transfer is really quite clean with good details in the dark and shadow areas. At no point did I see any artifacts or dirt and, except in one of the deleted scenes, no stair stepping or color banding anywhere. The Mbps rate appeared to average in the mid twenties. Colors were natural looking and the focus of the transfer to blu ray is generally soft and film like without the video type color popping that we often see on some of today's films. Since I do not have the Standard Def version I really can't make a comparison between the formats but the Blu Ray transfer offers good contrast and clean imaging...

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