Posted: 02/09/2011

The Fugitive Review

by Robert Baum

Review: The Fugitive (1993)

Thanks to Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford has the chance to star as the lead in another potential hit yet again. After taking on the role of Jack Ryan in the film franchise based on Tom Clancy’s best-selling techno thrillers, Ford takes on the CGI dinosaurs gone amok along with such fellow action heroes as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone this summer as The Fugitive. Andrew Davis (Under Siege) directs this unrelenting actioner.
For those who have never seen the Quinn Martin production when it originally aired or in reruns, David Janssen portrayed Richard Kimble, a surgeon wrongfully arrested, convicted, and sentenced to die for his wife’s murder. Escaping en route to the big house, Kimble went on the run attempting to find his wife’s one-armed killer to clear his name and stay ahead of Lieutenant Philip Gerard (Barry Morse), the lawman obsessed with recapturing the doctor on the lam. This effort does not include narration by William Conrad, though.
The film opens just after the murder of Helen Kimble (“Sisters” star Sela Ward), whose brutal slaying is shown in flashbacks; recent widower Richard (Ford) is interrogated by the police. He’s soon on trial for his wife’s killing in the Windy City and Kimble is found guilty. He is put on a bus to the big house by the time the opening credits have ended.
Some of Kimble’s fellow convicts attempt a breakout before arriving at the prison which brings about an amazingly staged sequence where the bus crashes and shortly thereafter winds up in the path of a speeding train. Kimble and a few aboard manage to survive.
U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) arrives in the scene some time later finding the local law enforcers to not be as diligent as he. Unlike Morse’s Gerard, Jones’ Gerard has had no contact with Kimble, but is obsessed with finding and capturing the doctor.
Kimble manages to stay a stop or two ahead of Gerard and his crime-busting colleagues. He returns home to Chicago where he launches his own search for the killer and is as zealous at finding him as Gerard is with finding Kimble.
Given that Roy Huggins’ creation has action scenarist Jeb Stuart (Die Hard) as one of the writers, producer Kopelson firmly believes, unlike many in the action film business, that writing is key and intelligent scripting is an absolute must. The Fugitive has it. Jones goes for a hat trick, having previously appeared in last year’s Under Siege and Davis’ 1989 thriller The Package. He makes for a great nemesis. Jones also does what very few, with the best-known exceptions of Sean Connery and John Rhys-Davies (Raiders of the Lost Ark), have done: steal the scenes from Ford. It’s a standout performance which is among the most memorable in an action film since Alan Rickman played the suave subversive in Die Hard.
Ford as the reluctant hero turns in an impressive performance, as he almost always does. Here he shows a bit more vulnerabilty but has the dint and determination to go on in the face of great adversity. He does so with greater believabilty than his fellow action film peers Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Steven Segal. Ford’s only real threats seem to be Mel Gibson and Father Time.
Davis himself certainly is becoming a force to reckon with in the realm of modern action cinema directors. The Fugitive puts him among the field’s elite: Steven Spielberg, Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon), and James Cameron (Terminator).

Robert Baum is Currently a Bryn Mawr, PA-based film afficanado and pop culture junkie.

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