Jeremy’s Tophunder №6: The Fugitive
There are two directions that The Fugitive could have gone. The first could obviously be the movie they eventually made. But it could also have gone as a giant who-dun-it, setting Harrison Ford up to be a morally ambiguous character from the beginning, and not showing us the murder of his wife and his subsequent encounter with the real murderer. They could have put us in the shoes of the U.S. Marshals chasing him — not having all of the information, and being left to wonder for most of the movie whether or not he’s actually guilty.
Now, is that a better movie? Actually…. maybe? On a first-time viewing, it’s probably more gripping. If they were re-imagining the movie in 2020, that’s probably the direction it takes. It’s probably directed by someone like David Fincher or Christopher Nolan or Denis Villeneuve, and it’s probably gritty and dark and a mystery all the way through.
But would I enjoy it as much? Actually…. probably not. Part of the reason why it’s so re-watchable is because you find out Harrison Ford is the good guy in the first half hour of the movie. It’s easy to root for him. And when Tommy Lee Jones and the Marshals come around to realize that Ford is innocent (even while Chicago P.D. still insists he’s their man), that feels even better. You get to root for both sides.
That’s just kind of how big blockbuster movies were in the 90s. Hollywood was under the impression that the audience needed to know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. Sure, you could get that kind of dissonant, complex storytelling in art-house, independent movies that would go on to be critical darlings and win awards, but you didn’t really start seeing that in mainstream blockbuster storytelling until the early 2000s. I think that plays to The Fugitive’s advantage here, at least for the purposes of my criteria for the list. If the strength of the movie is based on a reveal of The True Good Guy and The True Bad Guy, and figuring out whether or not Richard Kimble actually killed his wife, it’s going to be slightly less re-watchable. It’s not going to be as satisfying each time back around.
But the version of The Fugitive we have is very, very re-watchable. It’s a movie that wasn’t taking itself too seriously, and it turned out to be awesome anyway. There’s a famous (but possibly apocryphal) story where Tommy Lee Jones was growing tired of director Andrew Davis’ attention to detail, and said something to the effect of, “can we just be done? It’s not like this movie is winning any awards.”
At the 1994 Academy Awards, The Fugitive was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture. Tommy Lee Jones won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
It was also nominated for Best Editing, despite having -six- different editors credited. They needed so many editors because filming started in Februray but Warner Brothers was adamant about having the movie ready by the end of the summer. So post-production was crunched down to be as quick as possible, and they needed six editors to get everything done on time. Go click through IMDB or Wikipedia for as long as you want and see if you can find any other movie with six editors. If you can, the movie is probably absolute trash. It’s basically unheard of.
The movie started with like, 25 different drafts of the script. Because it’s an adaptation of a TV show from the 60s, a lot of people had a lot of ideas about how to condense a story arc that took 120 episodes to complete into one two hour movie. At least one of the drafts had Tommy Lee Jones’ character as the one who hired the one-armed man to kill Harrison Ford and/or his wife. It took them five years to develop a script, using as many as nine different writers at different points. And when filming started in February of 1993 — THE SCRIPT STILL WASN’T EVEN FINISHED.
The interrogation scene was shot with only half of the dialogue written — the police’s lines. It made for great acting — Harrison Ford obviously doesn’t know where the line of questioning is going, so he’s going to sound caught off-guard and defensive. A good number of Tommy Lee Jones’ lines were ad-libbed, also, not only because Tommy Lee Jones is a good improviser and often improved or tweaked the written lines to suit his character, but also because there just wasn’t any dialogue written for a number of the scenes he appeared in.
All of this to say — HOW IS THIS MOVIE ANY GOOD?
If you explained the story of how this movie was conceived and produced, you’d assume we were talking about some incredible trainwreck of a movie that maybe became a cult classic like The Room or Mac and Me or Ishtar. But it was nominated for seven Oscars. It’s my 6th-favorite movie of all time. It makes no sense.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention two key random details that put the movie over the top for me.
First, the climax of the film involves Richard Kimble confronting Charles Nichols during the middle of a speech. Apparently, that scene was shot at the Chicago Hilton Hotel, and was referenced heavily by comedian John Mulaney in the last 10 minutes of his special The Comeback Kid, Perhaps my favorite stand-up special ever. (I would love to link it here, but it’s not on YouTube. It’s on Netflix, though. Just go watch it sometime. Great way to spend an hour.)
Second, when Richard Kimble is on his way to confront Charles Nichols, he’s stopped on the train by a police officer played by Neil Flynn, better known as the Janitor from Scrubs. Famously, the Janitor’s name was never revealed on Scrubs, but his cameo in The Fugitive was referenced in one episode as proof that the Janitor had a life and hopes and dreams before working at the hospital. It’s one of my favorite episodes of Scrubs and it’s a nice Easter Egg every time I watch The Fugitive.
My favorite scene? Not too controversial of a pick. It’s the train crash. No special effects. No miniatures. They crashed a full-sized train into a full-sized bus. 27 cameras. One take. $1 million. (Sure, Harrison Ford jumping off the bus as the train crashes was superimposed with a green screen, but still.) That scene runs into the introduction to Tommy Lee Jones’ character, one of the best entrances of any character in any movie on my list.
Could they re-make The Fugitive in 2020? Yes. Frankly, I’m surprised they haven’t. It’s right in the wheelhouse of a number of today’s top actors and directors. If they re-make it, will I see it? Almost certainly. It’s the kind of high-concept summer blockbuster that takes up a good number of spots on my list, and I can’t imagine a 2020 reboot of a mid-90s classic being unwatchable (and even so, there are a lot of “unwatchable” movies that I’ve seen half a dozen times). But would I enjoy it as much as this one? I can’t imagine I would. Harrison Ford was still very much in his prime, Tommy Lee Jones probably submitted his best performance ever (or, at least my favorite performance of his), and it seemed like they went into it with the intention of making a good movie and a fun movie, but not necessarily a great movie. I always seem to enjoy those. For whatever reason, this one always hits.
Overall, it scores low on initial viewing. Like a number of the movies I’ve written about these last few days, it’s one that’s gotten better with age. It seems like I enjoy it more every time I watch it. On my first draft of this list (which is probably, like, three years ago now), it probably landed in the 40–60 range. Every draft I’ve done since then, it’s risen. It’s a rare movie that might be even better on the 10th viewing than the first. With re-watchability such an important component of the rankings, The Fugitive lands comfortably in the Top 10.
(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)
Here’s our progress on the list so far:
6. The Fugitive
17. Ocean’s 11
24. Apollo 13
