Word: assassin
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...line from every half-baked rumor that ever surfaced about the famous pair. Bobby and Marilyn had a torrid affair, we learn, that was witnessed almost every step of the way by surveillance men hired by Jimmy Hoffa. The Teamsters boss even orders Bobby killed, but the would-be assassin, after training his telescopic sight on the couple smooching in a park, chickens out. Good thing, since Mafia boss Sam Giancana shortly thereafter tells Hoffa to lay off because the Mob is "doing a little business" with the Kennedy brothers...
...armed too." The one-liners hardly rule the show, and after his quota is filled, Eastwood really gets into character, leaving nothing to be desired. He makes a good connection with the other two lead roles, those of Agent Lily Rains (Rene Russo) and the would be assassin, a man known first as "Booth" because of his obsession with Presidential assassinations...
...much more interesting aspect of the film relates to Horrigan's connection with the assassin played by John Malkovich. Malkovich's character is friendly to Eastwood's and becomes a haunting specter as he digs under Frank's skin, reminding Horrigan of his past "failure" to save Kennedy...
Next stanza: In the Line of Fire, a just-above-par melodrama about a Secret Service agent haunted by having botched his protection of John F. Kennedy nearly 30 years ago in Dallas and now assigned to shield the current President from a would-be assassin. Frank Horrigan (Eastwood) is your basic borderline burn-out with questionable social skills. He's a beast from the past, Clintosaurus rex, who believes that the things he knows about people will compensate for his diminished physical resources. His opponent, Mitch Leary (John Malkovich), is your basic twisted genius, a rogue warrior with dead...
...heart, though, In the Line of Fire is a conversation between two sides of a smart, troubled mind. In a series of phone chats, Leary toys with Horrigan, hovers like a dark angel or a guilty conscience, lets the agent see his fun- house mirror image in an assassin's paranoid logic. Why kill the President? "To punctuate the dreariness." At the end of the cold war and the American century, Leary says, "there's no cause left worth fighting for. All that's left is the game. I'm on offense; you're on defense...