Washington, D.C. (July 15, 2008) -- In the Line of Fire is a thriller starring Clint Eastwood as Frank Horrigan, a veteran member of the Secret Service who is assigned to protect the President after a series of calls from mysterious man (played beautifully by John Malkovich) are made directly to him threatening to assassinate the President.

Horrigan was picked by the would be assassin because he was on the detail protecting JFK in Dallas when he was assassinated and was in fact, in the vehicle immediately behind the President’s vehicle. Horrigan devotes his time to ensuring that that faithful day in Dallas in 1963 is not repeated. In the Line of Fire is a well written and well paced film with excellent performances by Clint Eastwood and particularly John Malkovich as the creepy and relentless Mitch Leary. Recommended for fans of the film.

In the Line of Fire is encoded with AVC and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2:40:1. While I can heartedly recommend the film, the quality of the video is another matter. Quite simply, this is a very bland looking film with very muted colors. The entire film has a very washed out look to it, looking like it was left to bake in the sun too long. In fact, the colors are so muted and black levels so poor that I thought there was something wrong with my display when the film came on. While the muted colors are consistently muted throughout the film, detail comes and goes with some scenes looking very detailed and others soft. Needless to say, I was very disappointed with the look of this film on Blu-ray. Nevertheless, it is one fine film.

Encoded with Dolby True HD, the audio encode is as bland as the video. On the plus side, dialogue is well recorded and never gets lost in the mix. The overall fidelity of the sound here is quite good. However, this film is front loaded with little use of the surrounds, which seem to come into play mostly when motorcades or aircraft appear on the scene. There is no sense of ambiance or immersion in this sound mix. All in all, while the quality of the actual audio is quite good, there is simply not enough of it. This film is really crying out for a new audio mix.

IN CONCLUSION
In the Line of Fire is a great film with a lackluster video and audio presentation on Blu-Ray. Recommended for fans of the film. However, this is not a demo disc, far from it. To those of you out there looking for demo material, you may want to skip this one.

THE MOVIE: 4 1/2 stars out of 5
THE VIDEO: 4 stars out of 5
THE AUDIO: 4 stars out of 5