“You find that man!!”
Yeah, I’m in my Harrison Ford phase so bear with me. I didn’t much like the fourth Indiana Jones movie so I went back and revisited the Ford movies that I do like. For every Bewitched or Fat Albert flick–a tv series made into a bad movie–you get a Fugitive. And until The Fugitives or the Get Smarts or the Mission Impossibles stop making money Hollywood will continue to mine the past. Anyway…
We all know what The Fugitive is about. Harrison Ford is Dr. Richard Kimble (and for those that have seen the movie, try to say that full name without unconsciously trying to imitate Tommy Lee Jones’ voice) who has been wrongfully sentenced to prison. Of course. Oh, wait. Not just prison, but the man is going to death row. Kimble escapes and becomes, well, a fugitive, hunted by Tommy Lee Jones as US Marshal Samuel Gerard and his team of marshals, which include a Joey Pants, and Rose before she became Lost with Bernard.
You know the synopsis. And if you haven’t seen the movie yet, go out and rent it from the dollar kiosk at the supermarket, or from Netflix, or get it from that Chinese guy behind the dumpster over by the rendering plant. Just get it and watch it. You won’t be disappointed.
The movie didn’t have me at hello, but it had me pretty damn early in the conversation. We’re given a quick setup: the wife is murdered, Kimble is taken into custody, jailed, train accident, on the run, the marshals are after him…Standard action-adventure stuff. Where I thought this was going to be a better movie than the run of the mill actioners is when Kimble and Gerard face off against each other, with Kimble holding Gerard’s gun on the marshal, and Kimble saying he didn’t kill his wife. The movie could’ve gone any number of ways with this. We already know our two leads, and we’re already primed to accept that they may end up working together some way, PLUS it’s ingrained in us as theater-goers that Hollywood does things a certain way. So if Gerard had asked Kimble, “What do you mean?”, it would’ve made sense to the audience.
But that’s not how real life works. If the marshall and the fugitive had engaged in conversation of some sort I think the movie-going public would’ve been ok with it. I wouldn’t have, and most critics wouldn’t have gone with it, but the lowest common denominator would’ve been ok with it. Trust me. I’ve seen enough action-adventure flicks with army buddies and other stuck-in-adolescence friends and they would’ve been fine with things, telling me to shut up and that it’s just a movie so it’s ok for the marshal and the fugitive to have a conversation ’cause it’s Tommy Lee Jones and Han Solo for Christ’s sakes so they’ve gotta get together somehow ’cause we won’t have a fucking movie without ‘em.
True. And I would’ve still been pissed if that’s how it happened.
But it didn’t happen that way. Jeb Stuart and David Twohy, the screenwriters, thought the audience would be better than that. Thought the audience deserved something more than dumbed down advernture flicks. So when Kimble tells Gerard that he didn’t kill his wife, Gerard says, “I don’t care.”
That’s when they had me. Because the US Marshal doesn’t give a shit. It’s not his job, and if the movie told me that the marshal is going to actually listen to what this CONVICTED CRIMINAL says or does would make no fucking sense. I maybe would’ve enjoyed the movie if it played out the other way, but I always would’ve found the movie suspect.
So the writers and the director, Andrew Davis, play fair with us. The characters have real jobs, and they act like the characters they play. Each has his or her own reasons for doing things, and the people that made this movie don’t cheat to make things easier for the audience to understand. The people who made this movie did THEIR jobs competently, and we’ve got a good flick that may not be CITIZEN KANE, but it’s a damn fine movie on its own. And seriously, if you’ve got guests over and someone suggests a movie, and KANE and THE FUGITIVE are the only ones on the shelf, which one are you gonna pop in for good times? Keep KANE in the case til the flaky art student with the fantastic body comes over.
One other thing: Jones won an Academy Award for his work here, and it’s well-deserved. I honestly think the movie would be flat without Jones. Ford does his usual good job, but I think it’s Jones who keeps the flick moving. From what I understand, a lot of this was Jones’ own ad-libs (which Jones would tell you were not–just the result of good rehearsal), and working with his ‘posse’–the other US Marshals. This was the ‘flashy’ part, but I betcha it wasn’t that flashy on the page.
Tags: harrison ford, the fugitive, tommy lee jones
