In The Line Of Fire

Wolfgang Petersen of Das Boot fame directed this effective thriller starring Clint Eastwood as a US Secret Service agent haunted by his failure to act during JFK's assassination. Faced with another assassination scenario 30 years later, he attempts to match wits against the new threat: a rather 'John Doe'-like mental case played by John Malkovich. While the plot, dialogue, action and photography hangs together well, the film lacks those quirky, off-beat touches that make it enjoyable time and again. Still, it is quite solid the first time through, and is a must for Clint Eastwood fans.

From the outset, Columbia TriStar have set the standard for PAL DVD picture quality, and apart from a mild lack of colour saturation, which places it just behind the amazing Jerry Maguire transfer, In the Line of Fire is up there with the best of their early Aussie titles. The anamorphic 2.35:1 image is sharp, colourful, naturalistic and clear of speckles, grain or dot crawl, and scratches on the source. Backgrounds are rock solid, as are still frames. Produced in Europe along with all of Columbia TriStar's PAL catalogue, this is an another exceptional D1 mastering job and certainly a worthy reference DVD for demo purposes (and don't we love doing them!). Eat up those day-time exterior shots.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track is fairly good, although the subtler effects are most notable when the volume is pumped up. The Presidential street parade features some nice rear channel action with buzzy crowd noises all around and police bike engines revving front to back as they pass the camera -- these effects also work quite well with the two-speaker "virtual surround" setting on my Panasonic player. As with all PAL titles, the extra frame per second raises the pitch slightly (a point I won't be mentioning again in future region 4 reviews).

The two-channel Dolby ProLogic track sounds good and punchy through a two speaker set-up (Arcam 8 amp), and is preferable to using the 5.1 DD track or the redundant MPEG track, which sounds rather flat compared to 5.1 DD through the DSP-A1 on either a two or 5.1 speaker arrangement.

None, but the region 1 is the same. At least there's lots of subtitles to choose from during the dull moments.

As far as DVDs go, In the Line of Fire is a cool purchase as long as you enjoy the film. Those of you with cult-film or anti-mainstream sensibilities may want to rent this title first due to the lack of extra enticements on the DVD. But as far as a no-frills presentation goes, Columbia TriStar's PAL pressing of In The line of Fire is as good as one could hope for.