Clint Eastwood became a gun for hire once again as an actor in the first film in ages he was not a director, a year after his Oscar-winning box-office success with the now-classic revisionist Western UNFORGIVEN, playing ageing but determined US Secret Service Agent Frank Horrigan.
Horrigan is a bit of a burn-out – having been unable to prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on Nov 22nd 1963 – and now does basic field work to keep the energy up.
However, he is about to get a seemingly fateful second, if that’s the word, shot at looking after the present-day Commander-In-Chief, when he starts getting crank calls from a man who initially identifies himself as Booth (named so after John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln)
Booth turns out to be Mitch Leary (John Malkovich) a determined lone assassin who taunts Horrigan with his sins of the past by announcing he intends to kill the President soon. Horrigan wants back on the case, despite resistance from those close to ‘The Chief’, but confides in fellow agent Lilly Raines (Rene Russo, LETHAL WEAPON 3/4, RANSOM) who is cautious about his feelings.
Tapped phone calls lead Horrigan and his current partner Al D’Andrea (Dylan McDermott, STEEL MAGNOLIAS) into the zone, but Leary has a determination as well as a sense that he might just do what he planned….
Wolfgang Petersen (DAS BOOT) directs with depth and urgency from a fine script by Jeff Maguire, who wrote the screenplay for the 1981 football cult classic ESCAPE TO VICTORY with Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone and as with DIE HARD, the hero and villain are alike and from both sides of the same coin. Legendary composer Ennio Morricone (THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, THE MISSION, THE UNTOUCHABLES) topped off the film with a great score.