The Fugitive (1993 film)
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| The Fugitive The Fugitive DVD.jpg | |
| IMDB Page (external link) | |
| Writer: | Roy Huggins (Characters), David Twohy (Story and screenplay), Jeb Stuart (Screenplay) |
| Starring: | Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones |
| Director: | Andrew Davis |
| Music by: | |
| Distributor: | Warner Bros. |
| Release Date: | August 6, 1993 (USA) |
| Runtime: | 130 min. |
| Language: | English |
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The Fugitive is a 1993 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 only films to be associated with a television series and be so honored.
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Plot
Kimble is a successful Chicago surgeon who returns home from a party one evening to find his wife dying and a mysterious one-armed man 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 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 causes the bus to crash onto a train line. As a fugitive from justice, he becomes the quarry of the obsessed Sam Gerard, and his team of United States Marshals. They track Kimble back to Chicago as he searches for the real murderer.
There are many close calls with Richard almost getting captured. They are often brought about by Kimble's inability to stop helping those in need. The first is at a hospital where Kimble shaves off his beard, changes clothes into a doctor's uniform and walks past a police officer who is looking for him. Kimble tries to escape by stealing an ambulance but is forced to a halt by a police road block in a tunnel. He exits the ambulance and is forced to work his way through the tunnel's drainage system, followed closely by Gerard. Kimble escapes his persuers by leaping a great height down the spillway of a dam into the river below.
Kimble returns to Chicago to try and find the one-armed man who killed his wife. He rents an apartment and there he makes fake ID cards to use to get in to the local Cook County Hospital, where he searches the computers in the prosthetic limb area for phone numbers of people with false arms. 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 female doctor 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.
Kimble discovers, on going through the list of people with prosthetic limbs that one man is in jail for armed robbery. He then goes to the police station to talk to the man, but discovers it is the wrong man. He has a close call with Gerard who he passes on the stairs, but manages to escape out the station and into a Saint Patrick's Day parade.
Kimble's innate intelligence keeps him one step ahead of Gerard who begins to have internal doubts as to Kimble's guilt. The final showdown occurs at a medical conference where as the truth is finally revealed: Kimble was getting close to turning over evidence about an experimental liver drug that was killing patients and would have cost the company, and one of his colleagues millions. The one armed man had been sent by Kimble's colleague to kill Kimble that night to silence him. Gerard is now aware of the real criminals, thus allowing Kimble to exonerate himself, and bring the real criminals to justice.
Parallels
There are interesting parallels seen between this story and the novel/musical Les Miserables, with Gerard's pursuit of Kimble akin to the pursuit of Valjean by Javert, with one key difference: Javert never lets go of his obsession to follow the letter of the law and hunt down his fugitive, even killing himself when he cannot reconcile the justice Valjean dishes out. Gerard, on the other hand, is portrayed externally as a man like Javert, willing to even risk his own loyal followers to catch his man, but internally is far more of a thinking man who can balance justice and duty.
The sequel
Jones returned as Gerard in a sequel released in 1998, U.S. Marshals, which also featured Wesley Snipes, Robert Downey Jr. and Joe Pantoliano.
