In the Line of Fire

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In the Line of Fire is a 1993 film about Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, who couldn't save Kennedy, but who's determined not to let a clever assassin take out the current president.

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Written by Jeff Maguire.
An assassin on the loose. A president in danger. Only one man stands between them...


Contents

[edit] Mitch Leary

  • What did happen to you that day? Only one agent reacted to the gunfire, and you were closer to Kennedy than he was. You must have looked up at the window of the Texas Book Depository, but you didn't react. Late at night, when the demons come, do you see the rifle coming out of that window, or do you see Kennedy's head being blown apart? If you'd reacted to that first shot, could you have gotten there in time to stop the big bullet? And if you had - that could've been your head being blown apart. Do you wish you'd succeeded, Frank? Or is life too precious?

[edit] Dialogue

Mitch Leary: Why not call me Booth?
Frank Horrigan: Why not Oswald?
Mitch Leary: Because Booth had flair, panache - a leap to the stage after he shot Lincoln.
Mitch Leary: What's kept you in the game all these years?
Frank Horrigan: Why don't we get together and have a drink? We could talk about that.
Mitch Leary: Oh, I'd love to, but I think the less you know about me the better.
Frank Horrigan: Oh, why?
Mitch Leary: Because I'm planning to kill the President.
Frank Horrigan: Oh, now you shouldn't have gone and said that. It's a federal offense to threaten the President. You could go to jail, even if you don't mean it.
Mitch Leary: I mean it all right. John F. Kennedy said all someone needs is a willingness to trade his life for the President's, right?
Frank Horrigan: That's right.
Mitch Leary: I'm willing.
Mitch Leary: The irony is so thick you could choke on it.
Frank Horrigan: There's no fuckin' irony, Mitch.
Mitch Leary: Think, Frank. Think. The same government that trained me to kill trained you to protect. Yet now you want to kill me while up on that roof I protected you. They're gonna write books about us, Frank.
Frank Horrigan: How's the First Lady? She ask about me?
Lilly Raines: Have you gotten to know them yet?
Frank Horrigan: Well, I normally prefer not to get to know the people I'm protecting.
Lilly Raines: Oh, yeah? Why's that?
Frank Horrigan: Well, you never know. You might decide they're not worth taking a bullet for.
Mitch Leary: Watching the President, I - I couldn't help wondering why a man like you would risk his life to save a man like that. You have such a strange job - I can't decide if it's heroic or absurd.
Frank Horrigan: Now, why would a man like you want to risk his life to kill a man like that?
Mitch Leary: Don't you have a psychological profile on me yet?
Frank Horrigan: I don't put a lot of stock in them.
Mitch Leary: Nor do I. A man's actions don't equal the sum of his psychological parts. Doesn't work that way.
Frank Horrigan: Just how does it work?
Mitch Leary: It doesn't work, Frank. God doesn't punish the wicked and reward the righteous. Everyone dies. Some die because they deserve to; others die simply because they come from Minneapolis. It's random and it's meaningless.
Frank Horrigan: Well, if none of this means anything... why kill the President?
Mitch Leary: To punctuate the dreariness.
Frank Horrigan: What to do you see when you're in the dark, and the demons come?
Mitch Leary: I see you, Frank. I see you standing over the grave of another dead president.
Frank Horrigan: That's not going to happen. I'm onto you.
Mitch Leary: Forget it, Frank. I am willing to trade my life for his. I am smart, and I am willing, and that is all it takes. That president is coming home from California in a box.
Frank Horrigan: Where in California?
Mitch Leary: Uh, the address? Come on, Frank. I'll keep you in the game, but I'm not going to throw it for you.
Mitch Leary: Frank, you of all people, I want you to understand because we both USED to think this country was a very special place...
Frank Horrigan: You don't know what I used to think!
Mitch Leary: Oh, but you know about me? Do you have any idea what I've done for God and country? Some pretty FUCKING HORRIBLE things! I don't even remember who I was before they sunk their claws into me!
Frank Horrigan: They made you into a real monster, right?
Mitch Leary: That's right and now they want to destroy me because we can't have monsters roaming the quiet countryside, now can we?
Mitch Leary: I have a rendezvous with death, and so does the President, and so do you if you get too close.
Frank Horrigan: You have a rendezvous with my ass, motherfucker!
[Lilly's wearing an evening dress]
Lilly Raines: What are you looking at?
Frank Horrigan: I was just wondering where you hide your firearm. Don't tell me, let me guess.
Lilly Raines: [after a false alarm] The President was humiliated.
Frank Horrigan: He's alive, isn't he?
Lilly Raines: Yeah, well, we're here to safeguard his dignity as well.
Frank Horrigan: I'm not paid for that.
Lilly Raines: What about the time Kennedy's girlfriend was caught in the White House and you said she was with you?
Frank Horrigan: Don't you go believing every rumor someone tells you.
Lilly Raines: Frank, Wilder told me the whole story. About how you were suspended a month without pay. I'd say that was safeguarding his dignity.
Frank Horrigan: That was different. He was different.
Lilly Raines: Maybe you were different.
Frank Horrigan: I was different. The whole damn country was different. Everything would be different right now too if I'd been half as a paranoid as I am today. Fuck.

[edit] Cast

[edit] External links

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