The Fugitive is a 1993 feature film, based on the TV series of the same name. 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), a then unknown Julianne Moore, and Joe Pantoliano. The film was one of the few movies associated with a television series to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Plot
Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) is a successful Chicago-based vascular surgeon who returns home from an emergency late night surgery to find an intruder in his house. His wife, Helen Kimble (Sela Ward), has been fatally injured after being shot and having her skull fractured. Kimble fights with the attacker, a mysterious one-armed man who manages to escape. During the police investigation no evidence of a break-in is found, and numerous pieces of circumstantial evidence along with a made-up story by two police detectives lead the police to charge Kimble as the murderer.
During the trial a tape of Helen Kimble's 911 call is played. Hearing Richard arrive home while she is being attacked, she weakly mumbles Kimble's name trying to call out to him. The prosecutors convince the jury that she is naming Kimble as her attacker, and Kimble is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection.
While being transported to death row by bus, the other inmates in the bus attempt an escape. After the driver is accidentally shot, the bus crashes through a guardrail, rolls down a hill, and lands on a set of train tracks on which a train is approaching. The other inmates and uninjured guard flee the wreckage of the bus. Kimble manages to pull himself and a wounded guard to safety just before the train crashes into the bus and is derailed. Another surviving inmate who has found the keys to the handcuffs frees Kimble from his chains and they flee the scene separately on foot. As a fugitive, Kimble becomes the quarry of Deputy United States Marshal Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones), who leads a team from the US Marshals Service.
Although injured and on the run, Kimble is determined to prove his innocence. He is able to steal overalls from an unlocked pickup, and he sneaks into a hospital room where he is able to shave his beard and sew up his wounds. As he leaves the hospital, two medics are pulling the guard Kimble saved out of an ambulance. The guard is too weak to alert the medics, and Kimble steals the ambulance and escapes. In the hospital, the guard is able to communicate that he saw Kimble outside, and the police tie that to the stolen ambulance and set up a roadblock at the end of a tunnel. Kimble abandons the van in the tunnel and is chased through a storm drain system. Gerard catches him just as Kimble reaches the spillway of a dam hundreds of feet above a river. As Gerard orders him to turn around with his hands in air, Kimble dives from the spillway. Though Kimble is presumed to have died, Gerard orders a search to find his body. Kimble miraculously survives the fall and manages to evade capture.
Realizing that he will always be on the run until he can either prove his innocence or be recaptured, Kimble embarks on a mission to find the murderer. Kimble returns to Chicago where he makes contact with several of his former associates, including Dr. Charles Nichols (Jeroen Krabbé). Using money Nichols gives him, Kimble is able to rent an apartment. He forges an ID and begins working as a janitor at Cook County Hospital (the primary prosthetic clinic in the city) in order to gain access to patient records that could help him track down the murderer.
The son of Kimble's landlady is arrested on drug charges, and he cuts a deal by alerting the police to Kimble's whereabouts. Kimble accesses the hospital's database and finds several potential leads, including a one-armed man in jail. A suspicious emergency room doctor (Julianne Moore in one of her first roles) calls security after seeing Kimble looking at a little boy's X-rays and correcting the written diagnosis, sending the boy to ER. Kimble manages to leave before security comes. Gerard comes and questions the doctor about Kimble, and she reveals that the correction saved the boy's life. Realizing why Kimble risked working in a hospital, Gerard orders a cross-check of the database and finds the same man as Kimble. Kimble goes to visit the prisoner and realizes it is the wrong man. As he leaves, he is seen by Gerard who was coming to interrogate the same prisoner. Kimble is able to escape into the crowds at Chicago's St. Patrick's Day parade.
Kimble is eventually able to track down the correct one-armed man, an ex-cop named Frederick Sykes (Andreas Katsulas). Kimble breaks into Sykes' apartment and discovers that Sykes has ties to Devlin MacGregor, a pharmaceutical company that hosted an event Kimble was attending the night his wife was murdered. Kimble calls the police, briefly speaking with Gerard before setting the phone on the table and fleeing. Gerard traces the number to Sykes' address and searches the apartment. They find the same evidence that Kimble did and begin to suspect Sykes' as the real murderer.
Meanwhile Kimble is able to convince a former colleague to help him do some lab tests, and he discovers that Nichols, who also has ties to Devlin MacGregor, had inserted false liver samples from a test subject who was taking Provasic, a drug developed by Devlin MacGregor that was on the verge of being approved by the FDA. Nichols stands to benefit financially and professionally from the drug's release, and Kimble was on the verge of presenting evidence that Provasic caused serious liver damage. Realising that Kimble would destroy any chances the drug had of being approved, Nichols was determined to eliminate Kimble. He hired Sykes as a hitman and gave him the key to Kimble's house (which is why the police found no evidence of a break-in). However, Kimble was unexpectedly called away to perform surgery, leaving Helen the only one home when Sykes attacked.
Kimble leaves the hospital and heads towards a hotel where Nichols will be making a presentation on Provasic. On the L Train Kimble is identified by a policeman. Sykes has also tracked Kimble down and is about to shoot him when the policeman enters the car. Sykes shoots the policeman and Kimble pulls the emergency brake on the train. Kimble and Sykes fight, and Kimble is able to overpower Sykes and handcuff him to a rail. Kimble gets off the train and heads for the hotel, pursued by the Chicago Police who think that he killed the officer on the train.
Kimble enters the hotel as Nichols begins his speech, and Kimble publicly accuses Nichols of fraud. Nichols leaves the room inviting Kimble to accompany him to discuss it just as the Chicago police and Gerard track him down to the hotel. A protracted fight, carried through different parts of the hotel, starts between the two; Gerard calls off the police and the three-way chase eventually leads to the hotel laundry room where, while searching for Kimble, Gerard explains out loud the reasons why he knows Kimble is innocent, in an attempt to bring him into safe custody. Nichols reveals himself and attempts to shoot Gerard, but Kimble hits Nichols in the back of the knee with a lead pipe, then knocks him unconscious via a blow to the head, saving Gerard's life.
Kimble is escorted out of the building by Gerard as Sykes is arrested. They pass the same two police detectives who misled the court during the murder trial, now being berated for their "mistake" by the press since Sykes, a one-armed man, is now under arrest. Kimble is then finally freed of his handcuffs by Gerard, who hands him an ice bag as they drive off. The film ends with Kimble telling Gerard "I thought you didn't care" to which Gerard (jokingly) replies "I don't."
Notable Differences From the TV Series
Although Kimble was originally a pediatrician who lived in the fictional town of Stafford, Indiana, the movie depicts him as a vascular surgeon (a detail which turns out to be significant to the plot) based in Chicago. His marriage to Helen, depicted as bitter and volatile in the series, appears to be happy and healthy in the film.
Police lieutenant Philip Gerard from the series becomes U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard in the movie. Theoretically, this solves the plot hole of how Gerard's authority always managed to cross state borders, although this proves a moot point as the movie is set entirely in Illinois. While Gerard was always dependent on local law enforcement in the series, in the movie he is aided by a team of subordinate federal marshals.
The mysterious One-Armed Man, a drifter known by many names in the series, but whose primary alias (and possible real name) was Fred Johnson, becomes Frederick Sykes, a former police officer who now works in private security. The One-Armed Man's motive for murdering Helen is also notably different, involving a conspiracy / cover-up in the movie, while in the series, the murder occurred because of a botched burglary.
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. 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. Director Andrew Davis also received "Best Director" nominations at that year's Golden Globe and Director's Guild of America Awards (but was not honored with a similar nomination at the Academy Awards).
It also received largely enthusiastic reviews from film critics. It is widely considered to be one of the best films adapted from a television series. As of August 2008, it received a 94% 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]
South Indian film director Sangeeth Sivan remade this film in the regional language Malayalam in the name Nirnayam, starring the malayalam actor Mohanlal.citation needed
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.[3] 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).[4] 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 Kimble exiting an alley by 130 N. Wells St., with "Chicago Memorial" covering the then Illinois Bell Building sign.
It is said that there was an alternate ending to the film's script which featured Kimble sat in a bar at the end of the film un-screwing his false arm, suggesting Kimble killed his wife and must have had a mental problems and imagined the events that took place on the night of his wife's murder. However it is said this ending was too confusing and contradictory to the events which take place throughout the film and was not used in the film.citation needed
Novelization
J.M. Dillard wrote a mass market paperback novelization of the movie. She worked from the original screenplay, which eschews most of the humorous wisecracks spoken on film. Her novel looks more closely at some of the movie's leading characters, especially Gerard and his newest subordinate.
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. However, the fictional hospital at which Kimble works, Chicago Memorial, is featured.
In popular culture
- 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) didn't do anything!' 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 paddywagon 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? Shawn imitates a bit in the movie before saying "Hey, I can project Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive if you'd like?"
- In an episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Will brings out a one armed ginger bread man and asks Carlton, "Is the one armed man you've been looking for?
- In the Drew Carey Show episode "Drew and Mr. Bell's Nephew", after dealing with a job applicant asking about a recent theft in the department store, Drew remarks "Our only clue is that it was a one-armed man".
- In the Samurai Jack episode "Jack and the Hunters," Jack's leap from the drainage system to escape the hunters emulates Kimble's jump to evade Gerard.
- 'Old Yellow Bricks', a song by Arctic Monkeys, features the lyric: "You are the fugitive, but you don't know what you're running away from", referencing the film.
References
External links
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