In the Line of Fire: Eastwood saves His Career -- and Then Screws It Up Again
As I type this, In the Line of Fire is almost 30 years old and Clint Eastwood -- at age 91 -- will be the over the title star of a movie called "Cry Macho" to be released later this year. No movie star ever led a movie after age 90. Clint has made history.
That doesn't necessarily mean he's had the greatest of careers.
In the late 80's, as the director of his own very small scale movies, Clint started to cheat his fans and make very quick, low budget, "nothing" movies....it was almost an insult. The idea was that Clint's sheer stardom -- that face, that voice -- should be enough for people to show up.
But in the summer of 1988, when Clint brought us Dirty Harry V(The Dead Pool) -- it was TOO cheap, not much, big crowds didn't show up. Die Hard was the big budget action blast THAT summer.
One summer later, in 1989, the year of Batman and Indy Jones and the Last Crusade...Clint gave us...Pink Cadillac. Another nothing movie that didn't even seem to end properly.
Things got worse in 1990. An attempt to do a Lethal Weapon type thing with Charlie Sheen(The Rookie) proved an ugly and misogynistic misfire. An attempt to make a "serious" film -- White Hunter, Black Heart(with Clint playing a John Huston derivative)...nowhere.
I think people forget just how "down and out" Clint Eastwood was as the 90's began.
But he got two bits of luck.
One, famously, was the script he'd been hoarding for years that became "Unforgiven." The great script yielded a Best Picture winner and a modest hit for Eastwood, and a Best Director Oscar. But it was on HIS terms, yet again -- a mean, dour, grim anti-Western starring some old men (including Gene Hackman, Popeye Doyle finally working with his 1971 fellow icon Dirty Harry.)
The second bit of luck was actually...luckier. With Eastwood on the downslide...he was now willing to "work for hire" for other directors in other people's movies.
And he ended up -- for the first time in years -- in a REAL movie. A well made thriller, directed by a great action director (Wolfgang Peterson), with a well-written villain(John Malkovich) and a thoroughly professional look and sound. (No more with the "unpaid electric bill" look of Eastwood's dark self-directed films.)
Eastwood got In the Line of Fire after guys like Redford, Caan, and Ford turned it down.
And it was a hit.
But...alas: so was Unforgiven.
And as soon as he was done with In the Line of Fire....Clint went back to his old ways. Directing his own films. Cheaply and in the dark. He brought along some stars this time -- Kevin Costner and Meryl Streep and Gene Hackman again(as a murderous President in Absolute Power)....but Eastwood was back at his old stand.
Where he has remained ever since.
So let In the Line of Fire stand: the one REAL movie that Clint Eastwood has made in the last 30 years.