This Clint Eastwood Thriller Terrified Bill Clinton—and It's Leaving Streaming in 19 Days

But the movie that actually shook him? It wasn't a Western. It was Clint Eastwood's 1993 political thriller In the Line of Fire.

Clinton praised it on Larry King Live, calling it:

"...terrific. I liked the movie very much. I think it was as realistic as it could be and still be a real rip-roaring thriller."

That quote didn't make it onto the posters, but the film didn't need presidential PR to do numbers.

Box Office + Awards:

• Budget: $40 million
• Worldwide gross: $187 million
• Oscar nominations: 3 (Best Supporting Actor for John Malkovich, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing)

And now? It's about to vanish from streaming. If you want to watch the movie that made a sitting U.S. president uneasy, you've got 19 days before it disappears from your queue. No pressure.

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, this was the last time Clint Eastwood agreed to play the action guy without also sitting in the director's chair. Coming off his Unforgiven Oscar wins, Eastwood handed the reins to Petersen but kept the tone pure Eastwood — stoic, sardonic, and just barely holding it together.

Malkovich, meanwhile, plays one of the most unsettling villains of the '90s: a deranged ex-intelligence agent with a knack for disguises and a personal vendetta against the government. Naturally, he sets his sights on the President, while Eastwood's aging Secret Service agent — who failed to stop JFK's assassination — gets pulled back into the line of duty.

The movie hums with tension, especially in the phone call duels between Eastwood and Malkovich. No big set pieces, no Marvel-scale explosions — just sharp dialogue, a creeping sense of dread, and two men circling each other like predators.

The script was tightly focused, the action grounded, and for once, a studio thriller didn't treat the audience like it had the attention span of a goldfish. It's a film about failure, redemption, and the quiet horror of getting old in a job that worships youth and precision.

Also worth noting:

• It was Eastwood's first collaboration with composer Ennio Morricone since the Spaghetti Westerns.
• Despite the critical acclaim, he's never directed a political thriller like this himself — maybe once was enough.

So if you've never seen In the Line of Fire — or just forgot that the guy from Burn After Reading once nearly outacted Dirty Harry — now's your window. It's leaving streaming in just under three weeks.

Because even great movies get rotated out in this streaming hellscape, whether they scared a president or not.