The Fugitive (1993 film)

For the TV series, see The Fugitive (TV series).

The Fugitive
Movie poster for The Fugitive
Directed by	Andrew Davis
Written by	Roy Huggins (Characters), David Twohy (Story and screenplay), Jeb Stuart (Screenplay)
Produced by	Arnold Kopelson
Starring	Harrison Ford Tommy Lee Jones Sela Ward Julianne Moore Joe Pantoliano L. Scott Caldwell Neil Flynn
Cinematography	Michael Chapman
Music by	James Newton Howard
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release dates	August 6, 1993
Running time	130 min.
Language	English

The Fugitive is a 1993 Academy Award and Golden Globe Award winning feature film, based on the television series The Fugitive. The film was directed by Andrew Davis and stars Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble, and Tommy Lee Jones as Deputy United States Marshal Samuel Gerard. Jones won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. The film also featured Andreas Katsulas as the one-armed man, Sela Ward as Kimble's wife, Jeroen Krabbé (who replaced Richard Jordan), Julianne Moore, and Joe Pantoliano. The film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, one of the few films associated with a television series to be so honored.

Plot

Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) is a successful Chicago based vascular surgeon who returns home from work to find his wife, Helen Kimble (Sela Ward), dying following a brutal attack. The attacker is a mysterious one-armed man, Frederick Sykes (Andreas Katsulas), whom Kimble fights with, but the man escapes. During his attempts to save his wife, she scratches him, and, not having any physical evidence to prove his testimony about Sykes, two police detectives invent their own version of what happened and alter some of the evidence in order to make Kimble look guilty and end the investigation (such as tampering with a voice message of Kimble's dying wife calling Kimble for help and make it sound as if she was accusing Kimble of attacking her). Kimble is consequently convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection.

While being transported to prison by bus, the other inmates attempt a breakout. After the driver is shot, the bus crashes through a guardrail, rolls down a hill, and lands on a set of train tracks. Kimble manages to pull himself and a wounded guard to safety before a train rams the bus. Another surviving inmate frees Kimble from his chains and they flee the scene, separately, on foot. As a fugitive from justice, he becomes the quarry of Deputy United States Marshal Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones), who leads a team from the US Marshals Service. Fugitive Task Force.

Although wounded and on the run, Kimble is determined to prove his innocence. With the hunters never far behind, there are many close calls. Several times he is almost captured, mostly brought on by Kimble's instincts as a doctor. On one occasion, he escapes by leaping down the spillway of a dam into the river below. Said scene includes the now-famous moment in which Kimble, holding Gerard at gunpoint, tells him he didn't kill his wife, only for Gerard to retort with an "I don't care.". In another more-hilarious moment, during a chase in a hospital, Kimble manages to trick a group of security officers into holding Gerard back long enough for him to escape, having told them about a "man in a blue topcoat waving a gun and screaming at a woman".

File:Fugitive2 tommy.jpg

Gerard is held at gunpoint by Kimble

Kimble returns to Chicago to search for Sykes. He also makes contact with many of his former friends and associates from the medical community, virtually all of whom have never believed him to be guilty and are more than willing to help him. He also meets his old friend and colleague Dr. Charles Nichols (Jeroen Krabbé), who gives Kimble money, becomes a contact for him, and offers to help in any way.

Kimble's innate intelligence keeps him one step ahead of Gerard, who begins to have doubts as to Kimble's guilt, especially after Kimble makes a phone call to Gerard from Sykes' house, knowing that they will trace the call and be led to Sykes. Sykes, however, recieves Gerard coldly and convinces him he's never met Kimble in his life before. Later on, however, Sykes recieves a call from someone ordering him to carry out some kind of mission, leading to a confrontation between him and Kimble on a train, in which a police officer is killed and Kimble defeats Sykes in combat, handcuffing him to a post and knocking him out.

A while before this, however, Kimble is able to call Nichols again and tell him that the one who had his wife killed was Alec Lentz, a colleague of theirs in charge of tests of a new drug, R2U-90 (known colloquially as "Provasic"), since Kimble had discovered the liver damage it was causing: Nichols, however, contradicts Kimble, telling him Lentz died in a car accident quite a while before the murder. Kimble pays a visit to another colleague's office to view the pathologer's reports and take a look at some tissue samples from Provasic, where his colleague shows him a pile of reports approved by Lentz on the day he died, meaning someone else with access to the reports is the real culprit: Charles Nichols himself, who stood to benefit from Provasic sales and needed Kimble out of the way.

The showdown occurs at a medical conference, where Kimble publicly confronts Nichols during a speech and reveals the harmful side effects of Provasic. As the two doctors fight their own battle in another room, the Chicago police are on their trail, believing that Kimble is a cop-killer; they think Kimble shot the officer on the train. Gerard now knows that Kimble in fact did not murder his wife; Nichols had borrowed Kimble's car, from where he had telephoned Sykes to kill Kimble at his home, giving him Kimble's house keys and thereby explaining the break-in with no forced entry. Gerard is now determined to get to Kimble first to prevent the police from shooting him on sight.

Gerard calls off the police and follows Kimble to the laundry room. While searching for him, he explains the reasons why he knows Kimble is innocent. Nichols reveals himself and attempts to shoot Gerard, but Kimble disables him at the last moment, saving his enemy's life.

Kimble is escorted out of the building by Gerard as Sykes and Nichols are arrested, passing the same two corrupt police detectives who fooled the court being berated for their "mistake" by the press. Kimble is then finally freed by Gerard.

Reception

The Fugitive opened strongly in the United States box office, grossing $23,758,855 in its first weekend and holding the top spot for six weeks. It eventually went on to gross an estimated $183,875,760 in the US, and $353,900,000 worldwide. [1]

It was nominated for seven Academy Awards; Jones took the award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Tommy Lee Jones. The other Oscars it was nominated for were Best Picture; Best Cinematography; Sound Effects Editing; Film Editing; Original Music Score; and Sound. Jones also received numerous other awards for his role, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture.

It also received largely enthusiastic reviews from film critics. As of January 2008, it received a 93% score and has been certified "Fresh" on RottenTomatoes.com. Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars, calling it "one of the year's best films." [2]

Filming

Although almost half of the movie is set in rural Illinois, a large portion of the principal filming was actually shot in Jackson County, North Carolina in the Great Smoky Mountains. The famous scene involving Kimble's prison transport bus and a freight train wreck was filmed along the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad just outside of Dillsboro, North Carolina. Riders on the excursion railroad can still see the wreckage on the way out of the Dillsboro depot. Scenes in a hospital after Kimble's escape were filmed at Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva, North Carolina.

The rest of the movie was filmed in Chicago, Illinois, including some of the dam scene, which were filmed in the remains of the Chicago Freight Tunnels (and also at Deals Gap, North Carolina). The "one armed man" lived in the historic Pullman neighborhood of Chicago (see Pullman, Chicago). Harrison Ford used the pay phone in the local bar (the Pullman Pub), at which point he climbs a ladder and runs down the roofline of the historic rowhomes towards the one armed man's house. There are several other scenes that show the rowhouses of the historic neighborhood George Pullman built in the 1870s for his factory workers. During the St Patrick's Day Parade chase scene, Mayor Richard M. Daley and then Illinois Attorney General, Roland W. Burris, are briefly, but prominently, shown as participants in the parade. One night scene under the 'L' tracks, showed Kimball exiting an alley by 130 N. Wells St., with "Chicago Memorial" covering the then Illinois Bell Building sign.

Spin-off film

Jones returned as Gerard in a spin-off released in 1998, U.S. Marshals, which also featured Wesley Snipes, Robert Downey Jr. and Joe Pantoliano. While the second movie also features Gerard's team of marshals hunting down an escaped fugitive accused of murder, it does not involve Kimble or the events of the first movie in any way. However, the fictional hospital at which Kimble works, Chicago Memorial, is featured.

Pop culture references

• The movie Wrongfully Accused spoofs this movie.
• In an episode of Crossing Jordan, Jordan stumbles across the "one armed man"'s body in her Boston morgue who a California Death Row inmate has claimed was responsible for a murder she was convicted of. The film The Fugitive was mentioned once by name and later referenced once.
• In an episode of the American sitcom Scrubs, the Janitor is pointed out to be a policeman that was shot near the end of The Fugitive. Neil Flynn, the actor who plays the Janitor, actually did play that part.
• In The Simpsons episode Lisa's Rival, the dam scene is spoofed with Milhouse (whom Bart had previously got on America's Most Wanted) stands at the edge of the dam explaining that '(he) is innocent!' with an FBI agent (closely resembling Gerard) replying "I don't care!". He then proceeds to jump off the dam, just like Kimble, only he yells, "Ow! My glasses!". In another episode, Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two), Homer manages to escape custody when his paddy wagon is overturned by Chief Wiggum's attempt to get his drive-thru order, shortly before the wagon is hit by Jasper's car, in much the same way as the train crashes into Kimble's prisoner transport bus (Homer similarly has both his hands and feet shackled). Also in the episode "Bart Gets Famous"", Bart writes on the chalkboard at the start "My homework was not stolen by a one-armed man"
• In the movie The Mask, when Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey) is being arrested in the park by Lt. Kellaway (Peter Riegert), he sarcastically tells the lieutenant "It wasn't me! It was the one-armed man!"
• In one episode of Johnny Bravo Johnny is accused of stealing the cookies of a policewoman, but he claims it was a "two-armed man".
• In the Drawn Together episode "The Lemon-AIDS Walk," Wooldoor Sockbat attempts to flee after stealing from a candy store, winding up at the top of a decorative waterfall in the mall. After Wooldoor protests that he didn't do anything, a disinterested security guard responds, "I don't care."
• Devlin-Macgregor, the fictitious pharmaceutical company that Kimble was going to blow the whistle on, has also been featured on trial in the television series Boston Legal.
• In the film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back there is an animal research facility named Provasic and a parody of the dam scene, involving Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly.
• In the Psych episode Game Set...Muuurder? Shaun imitates a bit in the movie before saying "Hey, I can project Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive if you'd like?"
• The Iron Maiden song "The Fugitive" is based on the movie.

External links

• The Fugitive at IMDb
• The Fugitive at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Fugitive at Box Office Mojo
• U.S. Marshals at IMDb