‘In the Line of Fire’

With Clint Eastwood (pictured) starring as a veteran Secret Service agent in Wolfgang Petersen’s crisply entertaining 1993 movie, the key question is, ‘Who gets to play the implacable assassin sworn to drop the President?’ The choice was John Malkovich, who received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for providing an intrinsically evil presence, an ideal foil for Eastwood’s blunt delivery. Traumatized ever since the killing of J.F.K., Eastwood’s Frank Horrigan wants to be on hand when Malkovich makes his try. Petersen brings many of the same qualities to the film as Eastwood himself would: a lean, unadorned style, a concern with pace and an understanding of genre (TMC Monday at 6:50 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m.).