A man
betrayed. A crime unsolved. The chase begins. Loosely based on the landmark
television series that ran on ABC from 1963-1967, Andrew Davis’ The Fugitive (1993) is a
character-driven roller coaster ride with few equals. Certainly, no thriller
since The Fugitive has come anywhere
close to recapturing the antagonistic buddy-buddy relationship that unexpectedly
blossoms between wrongfully accused convicted murderer, Dr. Richard Kimble
(Harrison Ford) and caustic U.S. Marshal, Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones); the
pair at each other’s throats and on opposite sides of the law in a race against
time to get to the truth behind the one-armed man.
In preparing
the movie director Davis went through countless permutations of its screenplay,
a gestation period of approximately twenty years before producer Arnold
Kopelson was given the green light over at Warner Bros. Even then, Kopelson
received polite ‘advice’ that he was
making a serious mistake. No one had attempted to condense a popular TV series
into a movie since Hecht-Lancaster’s production of Marty (1955). But Kopelson had a gut feeling about the project’s
success and so did Davis who continued to tinker with the plot throughout the
shoot, screenwriters Jeb Stuart and David Twohy on constant standby as the
story continued to morph.
For the most
part the changes made throughout distilled the narrative down to its essentials
– the exoneration of Richard Kimble. Somewhere along the way editor Dean
Goodhill came up with the idea of eliminating virtually all of the backstory
into a six minute montage in flashback, intercutting the murder of Kimble’s
wife, Helen (Sela Ward) with Kimble’s incarceration and conviction. Lost in
this editing process was Julianne Moore’s role as Dr. Anne Eastman who, in the
original treatment became Richard’s new love interest and a valiant ally in his
exculpatory search for the truth. As shooting progressed, improvisation became
an integral part of the film-maker’s acumen. The scene where Richard is
relentless pursued by Gerard down the stairs at county lock up was given an added
kick by Harrison Ford who suggested Gerard fire his service revolver into the
plate glass only to discover that it is bullet proof. This scene is, of course,
a flub, as U.S. Marshals do not have the authority to fire on an unarmed man
who does not present an immediate threat to them.
Director
Andrew Davis has conceded that a lot of the momentum of The Fugitive was resolved in the editing room; his team working
round the clock to reshape the raw footage into an exhilarating caper. As
example; the sequence where Gerard, after having slipped down a shaft inside a
drainage tunnel suddenly discovers he is at Richard’s mercy, initially contained
some fairly extensive exposition; both men making their own stake pointedly
clear. Davis decided to simply ‘cut to
the chase’ as it were; the dialogue sparsely pared to exactly two lines –
possibly, the most famous in the whole movie.
Richard: “I didn’t kill my wife.”
Gerard: “I don’t care!”
For the train
wreck Davis used a real locomotive and cars dragged on cables with Harrison
Ford performing most of his own stunt work while nervous insurance agents
looked on. The derailment, spectacular and untainted by all but a fleeting
glimpse of CGI in post-production remains one of the most harrowing examples of
full-scale action ever put on film. The
Fugitive’s set pieces; the aforementioned wreck, Kimble’s dive off the dam,
his narrow escape through the streets of Chicago during its annual St.
Patrick’s Day parade, the showdown between the one-armed man and Kimble aboard
an elevated train; these are expertly staged and memorably played out. But it’s
the introspective moments in between that set The Fugitive apart from virtually any and all contemporary
thrillers. Too often in American-made action/adventure movies such moments of
exposition are used merely to string together the action sequences without any
real thought for heightening their emotional impact.
But The Fugitive does exactly the opposite.
We are invested in Richard Kimble’s plight, partly out of Davis’ careful
planning during these causal links in the story, but also because Harrison Ford
is our star. Ford’s presence is an easily identifiable trademark that grounds
the story in a more permanent investment of our time and interest. That is the power of genuine star quality. It
cannot be manufactured or created out of thin air. It just has to exist on its
own and Ford has it in spades. Ditto for Tommy Lee Jones. Thus, the story never
seems to lack or lag, primarily because both men pull their weight and backs
into their performances that engage the audience, despite the fact each spends
much of the movie’s run time apart from the other, their purposes on a parallel
course destined to eventually collide.
The Fugitive opens with Helen’s murder. Richard is suspected of
the crime almost immediately by Detective Kelly (Ron Dean); his story of
struggling with a one-armed man, Sykes (Andreas Katsulas) seems implausible and
far-fetched. We fast track through the trial; flashbacks illustrating what
really happened the night Helen died. We see the couple attending a charity
fashion show where Richard is introduced to Dr. Lentz (David Darlow) by fellow colleague,
Dr. Charles Nichols (Jeroen Krabbe). Richard is called
away for an emergency assist and Helen returns to their fashionable townhouse
alone with thoughts of creating a romantic evening upon her husband’s return.
Regrettably, Sykes is already in the house. He brutally assaults Helen,
crushing her skull with a piece of art deco sculpture moments before Richard’s
arrival; the 911 call Helen makes before succumbing to the blow on her head
inadvertently used as proof during Richard’s trial of his complicity in the
crime.
Sentenced to
die by lethal injection, Richard is loaded onto a bus with other inmates bound
for a maximum security federal penitentiary. A staged confrontation between the
inmates and the jail officers (Frank Ray Perilla and Otis Wilson) causes the
bus to run off the road, flip over and roll onto the open tracks where it is
T-boned by an oncoming freight train. Kimble narrowly escapes being crushed by
the locomotive and is assisted by fellow inmate, Copeland (Eddie Bo Smith Jr.)
who has found the keys to their leg iron restraints. Copeland takes off in one direction, Kimble
the other with U.S. Marshall Samuel Gerard arriving on the scene to question
and pick apart the guard’s statement that all of the inmates perished in the
fiery crash. Gerard takes command of the investigation away from a rather cocky
Sheriff Rawlins (Nick Searcy), the dragnet spreading far and wide. Richard
manages to elude Gerard for a time, stealing coveralls from an automotive
garage and then sneaking into a nearby hospital where he treats his own wounds
sustained during the crash before making off with an elderly patient’s lunch,
clothes and money.
Unfortunately,
the surviving guard from the wreck is being treated at this hospital and
identifies Richard who is on his way out. Richard steals an ambulance and
Gerard and his men make chase by helicopter, converging on a dam. Richard
abandons the ambulance inside a tunnel, then narrowly escapes being taken into
custody by jumping from the top of the dam, seemingly to his own death amidst
the swirling waters far below. While Gerard has the local authorities dredge
the spillway for a body, Richard manages his escape further downstream,
eventually renting a room from a Polish landlady (Monika Chabrowski) whose son
(Lonnie Sima), unbeknownst to Richard, is a drug dealer. In the meantime,
Gerard gets a lead, so we are led to believe, on Richard. Instead, Gerard and
his men bust in on Copeland who has shacked up with his ex-girlfriend (Lillie
Richardson). In the resulting chaos one of Gerard’s agents, Newman (Tom Wood)
is temporarily taken hostage. But Gerard saves the day by shooting Copeland
dead in a split second act of heroism.
We return to
Richard’s boarding house; police descending on it in a sting operation but not
to apprehend Richard, rather to arrest the landlady’s drug-dealing son. Richard
re-enters his old life, stealing a janitorial I.D. that allows him access to
the prosthetics department where he begins to investigate and learn the
identity of the one-armed man who murdered Helen. Richard is spotted, though
not identified as such, by Dr. Anne Eastman (Julianne Moore) who suspects him
of being more than he is after she asks him to take a wounded boy (Joel
Robinson) up to radiology. Instead, Richard reads the X-ray and realizes the
boy will die without immediate surgical intervention. He changes the boy’s
charts to indicate such and wheels him into surgery, thereby saving his life.
Richard also contacts Dr. Nichols and confides his findings about Sykes after
breaking into Syke’s apartment and finding photographs taken of him and Lentz
on a fishing trip. When Nichols informs Richard that Lentz is dead from an
apparent auto accident, Richard is baffled – his exoneration at a standstill.
Richard then alerts Gerard to Sykes’ whereabouts. As such, Gerard begins to
suspect that perhaps Richard is innocent after all.
In the
meantime, Richard has deduced that Nichols helped falsify research on a new
vascular drug, Provasic because the drug company involved in funding the
research could not afford its failure, despite the fact that the new compound
is proven to cause cancer in patients. Realizing that Nichols was behind
Helen’s murder all along, and most likely behind Lentz’ accident too, Richard makes
plans to confront Nichols at a drug conference. In the meantime, Nichols has
instructed Sykes to kill Richard. Sykes makes his attempt aboard a moving El-train,
shooting a transit cop (Neil Flynn) in the process before Richard manages to
subdue and handcuff Sykes to one of the overhead metal poles.
Richard
hurries to the hotel conference where Nichols is the keynote speaker and confronts
him with his findings before a packed audience. Nichols makes light of the
incident in a feeble attempt to save face; then assaults Richard in another
part of the hotel. Gerard bursts into the suite pursuing Richard and Nichols to
the rooftops. Richard and Nichols plummet through a glass roof onto the top of
an elevator that stops inside the hotel’s laundry area. Gerard makes it known for
the first time that he believes Richard’s story. In the meantime, Nichols
attempts to murder Gerard with a gun taken from fellow agent Cosmo Renfro (Joe
Pantoliano) whom he has already knocked unconscious. In the original draft,
Cosmo was supposed to be killed by Nichols. But Pantoliano pleaded with
director Davis to let his character live – a fortuitous decision indeed when
Davis decided to do a sequel to The
Fugitive – U.S. Marshals (1998)
in which Pantoliano reprises his role. The
Fugitive ends with Richard thwarting Nichols attempted murder of Gerard,
but then being escorted in handcuffs by Gerard to the relative safety of a
waiting car – Gerard unfastening the cuffs once inside, suggesting that
Richard’s ordeal is at an end.
The Fugitive’s climax is something of a letdown; the penultimate
confrontation between Nichols and Richard over too quickly. Movie endings are
perhaps the toughest nut to crack. Too few of our collective cherished
celluloid memories end the way we might have hoped or expected. The Fugitive’s ending is not awful, but
it is rather swiftly resolved and in
an extremely perfunctory way at best. One wishes for more of a resolution
between Richard and Gerard, or perhaps an epilogue showing Richard beginning his
life anew after his ordeal has ended. So too does the overall arch of the chase
scenario occasionally veer towards the episodic; the lay of the land basically
thus: Richard runs away, Gerard catches up, Richard runs away again, Gerard
catches up again. Still, the story moves along with considerable ease, the
characters expertly fleshed out and sustained throughout the story. It all
works – more than serviceably and with considerable visual flare besides; the
stark earthy textures continuing to hold up some twenty years after the movie’s
debut. When The Fugitive had its
world premiere it was an immediate sensation with audiences, becoming one of
the most profitable hits of the season. In the twenty years since gone by The Fugitive remains a fairly engaging
and deftly exciting action/thriller. Does it represent the very best of its
ilk? Debatable. But it definitely deserves to be revisited again; its style
going a long way to mask the occasionally faltering and uneven aspects of its
substance.
This is Warner
Home Video’s second bite at the hi-def apple for The Fugitive. The initial Blu-ray was, frankly, a disappointment. Not
only had the image not been stabilized, color fidelity was lacking and fine
details seemed less that fully realized. There were also age-related artifacts
aplenty and a smattering of edge enhancement that left one wondering why The Fugitive had made the leap to 1080p
in the first place. All of the aforementioned shortcomings have been resolved
for Warner’s new 20th Anniversary edition. We get a pluperfect
remastering effort with solid, vibrant colors, perfectly balanced contrast and
grain reproduced as very film-like and thoroughly satisfying. This is a brand
new transfer and the way this movie ought to be seen. Great stuff!
The newly
remastered DTS 5.1 audio is robust; James Newton Howard’s score accelerates the
nail-biting tension with an aggressive spread that will really give your
speakers a work out. Warner has also gone to the well for some new solid extras
including an almost half hour long ‘making of’ with new interviews from cast
and crew. We also get the pilot episode from The Fugitive 2008 television series short-lived resurrection, plus
all of the extras that were included on the old Blu-ray release (imported audio
commentary, trailers and 2 featurettes from the original DVD release back in
1997). Bottom line: recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
4.5
EXTRAS
3.5
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