The Fugitive (1993 film)
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| The Fugitive | |
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 Movie poster for The Fugitive |
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| Directed by | Andrew Davis |
| Produced by | Arnold Kopelson |
| Written by | Roy Huggins (Characters), David Twohy (Story and screenplay), Jeb Stuart (Screenplay) |
| Starring | Harrison Ford Tommy Lee Jones Sela Ward Julianne Moore Joe Pantoliano L. Scott Caldwell |
| Music by | James Newton Howard |
| Cinematography | Michael Chapman |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | August 6, 1993 |
| Running time | 130 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Fugitive is a 1993 Academy Award and Golden Globe Award winning feature film, based on the television series The Fugitive, starring 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. It also featured Andreas Katsulas as the one-armed man, Sela Ward as Kimble's wife, Jeroen Krabbé, 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.
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[edit] Plot
Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) is a successful Chicago vascular surgeon who returns home from an operation after a party one evening to find his wife dying following a brutal attack and a mysterious one-armed man with a prosthetic arm escaping. Despite his attempts to save her and his testimony about the one-armed man, Kimble is convicted of first-degree murder, due to evidence such as a misunderstood 9-1-1 call, his fingerprints found "on the lamp, the gun, and the bullets," and no signs of forced entry by the one-armed man. Kimble is sentenced to death by lethal injection.
While being transported to prison, Kimble escapes after a revolt by other prisoners, in which one prisoner pretends to be choking and then when an officer unlocks the door separating him from the prisoner. When the officer comes near him, the prisoner proceeds to stab him. Chaos ensues inside, and another officer attempts to shoot the prisoner with a shotgun. He manages to shoot one, then as another prisoner tries to direct the gun away from the prisoners, the officer accidentally shoots the driver, which causes the bus to crash onto a train line (that also causes the train to derail). Kimble manages to save the officer who was stabbed before and get out in time before a train rams into the bus (the bus tumbled onto the railroad). As a fugitive from justice, he becomes the quarry of Deputy United States Marshal Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones), who leads a crack team of manhunters from the US Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force.
There are many close calls with Richard almost getting captured. They are often brought about by Kimble's drive to help those in need. The first instance is at a hospital after Kimble shaves off his beard, changes clothes into a doctor's uniform. He sees one of the corrections officers wounded in the revolt and helps the man, who recognizes him, as he is being brought into the hospital. Kimble tries to escape by stealing an ambulance but is forced to a halt by a police road block in a tunnel in a dam. He exits the ambulance and is pursued by Gerard through the dam's drainage system. At one point, Kimble confronts Gerard and insists on his innocence. Gerard, whose mission is simply to capture Kimble and not to solve the crime, tells him "I don't care." Kimble tries to continue running but Gerard eventually traps him near the end of a spillway. Kimble escapes by leaping a great height down the spillway of the dam into the river below.
The encounter with Gerard at the dam makes Kimble realize that the authorities will always accept his guilt as a matter of fact, and that the only way to ever recover his freedom is by finding the real killer.
As Gerard's team of Marshals hunts down the remaining escapees, Kimble returns to Chicago to search for the one-armed man who killed his wife. He also makes contact with many of his former friends and associates from the medical community, virtually all of whom have never believed Kimble to be guilty and are more than willing to help him. He also meets his close friend Dr. Charles Nichols (Jeroen Krabbe), who gives Kimble money, becomes a contact for him, and offers to help in any way. Later, when confronted by Gerard, Nichols boldly tells him that he should give up because Kimble is too smart to ever be captured.
Kimble rents an apartment and there he makes fake ID cards to pose as a janitor to get access to Cook County Hospital, where he searches the computers in the prosthetic limb area for patient information matching the description of the one-armed man. Unfortunately the people he has chosen to stay with include a drug dealer and as the police arrive to arrest the dealer, Kimble has another close call. The drug dealer later informs police Kimble had been living with them. While police arrive at the apartment, Kimble is confronted at the hospital by a doctor (Julianne Moore) who had seen him change a young patient's medical orders so that he could have a life-saving operation, but Kimble manages to escape. Gerard, always in hot pursuit, arrives with the police and wonders why someone as smart as Kimble would risk capture by going to such a high-profile place as a hospital. At that moment, a man with a prosthetic arm walks by and Gerard realizes what Kimble was probably trying to do.
Going through the list of men with prosthetic limbs, Kimble discovers that one is in jail for armed robbery. He visits this man but sees that it is not his wife's murderer. Trying to understand Kimble's movements, Gerard also found that same man on a list of one-armed men with criminal records. Gerard arrives shortly after Kimble giving him a close call when they pass on the stairs, but he manages to escape into a Saint Patrick's Day parade with a hat to disguise himself.
Kimble's innate intelligence keeps him one step ahead of Gerard who begins to have doubts as to Kimble's guilt, particularly after Kimble finally finds and breaks into the house of his one-armed quarry, Frederick Sykes (Andreas Katsulas), finding evidence of Sykes' ties to Kimble's hospital and deliberately drawing Gerard's team to the house. Suspicious, Gerard and his Marshals begin to investigate Sykes and Kimble's hospital.
Kimble suspects that the one-armed man had been sent by someone working with Devlin MacGregor (a pharmaceutical company), to kill Kimble on the night of his wife's murder to silence him (though, it isn' clear yet why). This hypothesis is because of pictures associating Sykes with one of Kimble's fellow doctors who was working with Devlin MacGregor (which turns out was the company holding the gala the night his wife was murdered). Kimble starts to look into links between the fellow doctor and Devlin MacGregor and comes to a conclusion. However, Sykes confronts Kimble on a Chicago 'L' train, holding Kimble at gunpoint. When a police officer (Neil Flynn) sees Kimble on the train and orders him to surrender, Sykes turns around and shoots the officer three times, killing him. Kimble then pulls the emergency brake on the train. The one-armed man, having no available hand to grab onto anything with so as to stop himself, starts falling right down the center aisle of the train, and Kimble viciously punches him in the face. In the momentous fight that ensues, Kimble breaks Skyes's only functioning (and gun-wielding) arm, kicks him in the stomach, and pistol whips him in the head, completely disabling Sykes. Kimble keeps Sykes's gun, takes the dead policeman's gun and handcuffs, and fastens Sykes to a pole, knocking him unconsious after doing so. Kimble kicks open one of the windows and flees to the medical conference. However, Kimble is now thought to be a cop killer.
The showdown occurs at a medical conference at a hotel where the truth is finally revealed: Kimble was getting close to producing evidence that an experimental drug, called Provasic, nearing FDA approval was causing serious liver damage, and if revealed would have been detrimental to Devlin MacGregor, the pharmaceutical company producing Provasic. Dr. Nichols, who was working with Devlin Macgregor and stood to become very rich if Provasic was approved by the FDA, was covering up the medical evidence and gave the one-armed man the key to Kimble's home. Armed with incontrovertible evidence, Kimble challenges Nichols, who is giving a speech at the conference, with what he knows about the conspiracy and pursues him out of the conference room.
They begin to fight through the hotel. Although Nichols breaks a chair over Kimble, Kimble determination keeps him going, and Kimble eventually punches him in the face and kicks him in the midsection, until he eventually kicks him down a fire escape. Nichols then runs for his life across the rooftop. However, the Chicago Police Department has a helicopter watching the rooftop, wrongly believing Kimble to be a cop killer and intent on taking him down at any cost. Kimble catches up with Nichols when Gerard, who knows Kimble is innocent and needs to keep him (and himself) alive, tells the helicopter to back off. Kimble punches Nichols and throws him and himself through a roof, onto the top of a moving elevator. They both get off on the laundry floor.
In the final showdown in the hotel's laundry, Gerard calls out to Kimble, laying out everything he knows about Kimble's innocence and the conspiracy against him, and urging him to turn himself in to Gerard before the police kill him. Nichols, having heard Gerard's announcement and having taken a gun from one of Gerard's team, comes up behind Gerard to shoot him, but Kimble, in one more act of decency, saves Gerard's life by knocking Nichols to the floor with a massive lead pipe. At last, Gerard takes Kimble into custody and out of the hotel. At the same time, Sykes and Nichols are also taken into custody, leaving the Chicago police trying to explain what had happened regarding its previous arrest of Kimble as well as recent events. In the police car, Gerard symbolically unlocks Kimble's handcuffs and offers him an ice-pack for his hands before they drive away. This is symbolic because Gerard states earlier in the movie that he doesn't care if Kimble is innocent or not.
[edit] 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, of which it only won 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 was notable enough to inspire a parody film, Wrongfully Accused.
It also created the catch phrase: "looking for the one-armed man", which refers to anyone who is framed for a crime or other infraction and is seeking the real perpetrator. This, of course, is in reference to the Richard Kimble's endeavor to find the one-armed man who killed his wife.
It also created another, similar catch phrase: "It was the one-armed man!", which is used as an excuse when you get caught and have no other plausible excuse available. It was first used in this manner on television by Jim Carrey. (As well as in The Mask)
[edit] 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)[1].
[edit] Spin-off
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 under a death sentence, it does not involve Kimble or the events of the first movie in any way.
[edit] Pop culture references
- In an episode of the American situation comedy 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 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."
