Farewell to Wolfgang Petersen, and to the Sincere Action Movie

Late in Wolfgang Petersen’s In the Line of Fire (1993), Clint Eastwood’s veteran Secret Service agent, Frank Horrigan, stands at a window alongside fellow agent Lilly Raines (Rene Russo) and sorrowfully recalls the day John F. Kennedy got shot. Frank still feels guilty for failing to protect JFK three decades earlier — guilt that the film’s villain, a psychotic assassin named Mitch Leary (played with slithery glee by John Malkovich), has been using to bait him into a variety of confrontations. In their tense phone exchanges, Frank has avoided talking about JFK, despite Leary’s goading. But now, in this reflective moment with Lilly, he finally opens up about that day. It’s a surprisingly quiet scene (helped along by Ennio Morricone’s mournful score), with the words coming haltingly out of the actor’s lips. And then, Clint Eastwood does a thing he almost never does in movies. He sheds a tear. One solitary tear. The tear seems even to surprise him. He actually recoils ever so slightly upon sensing it.