My quick rating – 3.4/10. I knew this movie was in trouble when the first fight scene looked like the actors were reading tomorrow’s script instead of throwing punches. A Line of Fire kicks things off with Jack “Cash” Conry (David A.R. White) doing his best impression of someone reacting to punches that haven’t even landed yet. It’s like he’s auditioning for Minority Report: Kumite. And it doesn’t get better from there.
Cash is a former secret agent who traded his FBI badge for full-time dad duty after his wife passed. Noble, sure. But then his old partner’s niece Jamie (Katrina Bowden) rings him up with an emergency, and Cash jumps right back into a world of crime, corruption, and editing so choppy you’d think the film was spliced together during a car chase.
And speaking of Jamie, she might just be the clumsiest damsel this side of a Hallmark thriller. At one point, she wanders into a gas station, discovers a dead body, screams loud enough for Pluto to hear, and Cash—who is literally staring at the body from five feet away—somehow doesn’t notice it. Then, in an inspired bit of action logic, Cash picks up a random backpack, throws money on the counter, and walks out. Apparently, this nameless attendant moonlights as a personal shopper for on-the-run FBI dads.
Enter the villains: Cuba Gooding Jr. as “bad guy” and Jason Patric as “worse guy,” running a gun-smuggling business so loosely sketched it makes Mad Libs look like Tolstoy. There are vague mentions of “snitches,” but the plot doesn’t bother circling back until the wrap-up ending, which lands with the grace of a bowling ball dropped on a trampoline.
Romance? Oh, you bet. Jamie and Cash go from “I don’t know who you are” to “let’s make out” in about the same time it takes me to microwave popcorn. If that wasn’t enough, Scott Baio strolls in as a retired cleaner, reminding us that apparently everyone got a call to dust off their ’90s direct-to-video résumés.
The action logic is equally priceless. Bulletproof vests apparently only work once, because after taking a single shot, Cash just ditches his. I guess Kevlar is like a smartphone screen protector—you crack it once, it’s basically useless. Add in the classic “I’ve got one more shot left before I die” trope, complete with a bullet wound so harmless it looked like the cinematic equivalent of a paper cut, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for unintentional comedy.
And then—because the film just can’t help itself—the main villain is revealed to be “Mr. X.” Yes, like that Mr. X, the one from Resident Evil or maybe even Mega Man. I laughed, not because it was clever, but because I suddenly realized Capcom video games have deeper plots and stronger dialogue than this script ever dreamed of.
Look, if you’re nostalgic for those straight-to-video action flicks that Lorenzo Lamas and Michael Dudikoff used to crank out in the ’90s, A Line of Fire might scratch that itch. But don’t fool yourself—there are far better examples of that era to revisit. This one’s more like reheated leftovers: technically edible, but you’ll regret it halfway through.
