The Fugitive – 1993
This was an incredible movie. It did so many things right. It was a wonderfully suspenseful cat-and-mouse action/thriller about a man who is wrongfully accused and convicted of his wife’s murder. He gets the death sentence, but fortune gives him the opportunity to escape. He goes on the run, and the main plot of the film is about how he avoids being recaptured while investigating his wife’s murder.
Everyone remembers Harrison Ford as Richard Kimble, but not everybody remembers Tommy Lee Jones in an Oscar winning performance as Deputy U.S. Marshall Samuel Gerard. Both men did a great job in their respective roles. It is generally hard to go wrong with Harrison Ford. I have never seen him in anything I didn’t like. But I have to look at Jones with a little more caution. As an actor, he has a very calm and easy demeanor. He doesn’t often display heightened emotion of any kind. This often translates into the appearance of unenergetic acting, bordering on passionless. I know this isn’t true, but everything is so low key for him, I’m often surprised at how popular he is in Hollywood. But here, I though he did just fine. He was very well-cast and deserved his Best Supporting Actor Award.
And I would also like to make mention of several other names I recognized and liked. Joe Pantoliano played Gerard’s fellow Marshall, Cosmo Renfro, offering a little subtle comedy against Jones’ dry humor. Jeroen Krabbe played a former colleague of Dr. Kimble, Dr. Charles Nichols, who is revealed as part of the conspiracy. Jane Lynch and Julianne Moore have smaller supporting parts. And, of course, I have to recognize Andreas Katsulas as Fredrick Sykes, one of the movie’s main antagonists, otherwise known as the one armed man.
So what was it about the movie that made it work so well? For me, it was the combination of many things like the great cast, the intense action music by composer James Newton Howard, the great cinematography, and the smart script. I loved that awesome line which so perfectly encapsulated Gerard’s character. When Kimble says, “I didn’t kill my wife!” Gerard responds by saying, “I don’t care!” But most of all, it was the man who directed the movie, Andrew Davis, who made it all happen. More than anyone, he was responsible for keeping the audiences on the edge of their seats for over two hours. The chase seemed to be non-stop and exciting the entire time. All the near misses, the close chases and the misdirections were so well timed.
I loved how we followed Dr. Kimble’s efforts to prove his own innocence, and the police’s efforts to catch him. And they were very evenly matched. It would have been easy to take the easy way out. The police could have been portrayed as less intelligent as Kimble, making his evasions and escapes seem unremarkable. He would avoid being captured and we would say, well, of course he got away. Look how bumbling Marshall Gerard is. But because Gerard and his team was just as smart as Kimble, it was believable that they were always just a step or two behind him, never letting him get too far out of their reach. Gerard’s pursuit of Kimble was relentless and the suspense was inherent in the chase was really fun to watch!
I also loved how it was shown that Kimble was incredibly smart in how he intentionally made sure the police never got too far behind. Sure, he was investigating the murder, but he made sure the police were right on his trail, ensuring that they saw the same evidence he was uncovering. That was so important because by the time he learned who was behind it all, the police, by virtue of their pursuit of him, knew that he was, in fact, innocent. And it was great how, by that time, Gerard was assured of his innocence as well. In this way, the script was incredibly well-crafted and yet easy to follow.
And I’d also like to mention a really great scene that caught me by surprise. When Kimball had originally escaped incarceration, another convict escaped at the same time. Kimble rents a room in a house and goes out to do his investigating. The police are shown saying how they have found their man, and then we see them on-route to capture their fugitive. I actually found myself asking how on earth they had found him. We see Kimble returning to his room. The tension builds. The police surround the house. Kimble is almost home. But we’ve been tricked! The raid is actually to capture the other convict who had escaped! Great misdirection!
The Fugitive was a great movie and was very fun to watch. Not only was I rooting for Dr. Kimble, I was also rooting for Gerard! If I had any complaints at all, it would be a minor issue I had with the bad guys. They were supposed to be pretty smart, but they mad a few illogical mistakes. For example, as assassins go, Sykes wasn’t very good. The original target was supposed to be Kimble and not his wife. And when he went out to kill Kimble in the latter half of the film, there were several ways he could have easily gotten close enough to him to shoot him without any kind of resistance. Or Dr. Nichols getting into a fist fight with Kimble and trying to shoot Gerrard for no conceivable reason. Oh well. At least the fights made for some exciting action sequences.