The Fugitive

First, here’s the answer to the question that buzzed around the theater during the screening of The Fugitive. David Janssen played Dr. Richard Kimble in the old TV series of the same name.

The film is only loosely inspired by the television series. On a couple of points, it’s much better – it’s closer to the spirit of Hitchcock and it has a far superior climax than the series’ disappointing wrap-up.

Harrison Ford is the new Dr. Kimble – a role he acquired after Alec Baldwin backed out of the picture. Good thing, too. Ford is a much better actor than Baldwin. He’s also the modern master of the morose, hunted look. Granted, Ford has always looked as if he had just bitten into something slightly foul-tasting, but it’s an expression that works for The Fugitive.

Kimble has every reason to feel morose: he’s railroaded for his wife’s murder even before the opening credits are over. Then, a shoot-out erupts on the bus in which he’s being transported to prison. The bus is then broad-sided by a train, and Kimble ends up being chased over half the countryside by the train engine. Then he takes a five-mile nose-dive down the side of a dam.

Fortunately, the preposterous stunts that open The Fugitive quickly give way to a dark, grim and (most surprising) witty film that slows to a more realistic tempo as Kimble returns to Chicago and doggedly searches for the one-armed man who killed his wife. Before you know it, the movie becomes a genuinely suspenseful thriller.

Kimble has more than his wife’s murder to contend with. He also has to learn who framed him, and why – and he quickly discovers that there is only one person he can trust.

Enter Deputy U.S. Marshal Gerard, the man who is pursuing him with near fanaticism. As played by Tommy Lee Jones, Gerard first appears to be a cold-blooded lunatic with the compassion of a pit bull. It’s halfway through the movie before we begin to realize that Gerard is neither stupid nor lacking a sense of justice.

Besides, Jones delivers some of the best put-downs in recent memory. His Gerard may be a mad dog to duty but he’s smart enough to cut through other people’s hogwash.

Aside from being the best thriller of the summer, The Fugitive propels the career of Chicago-based filmmaker Andrew Davis into high gear. Davis earned a modest critical reputation with a handful of early action flicks, including Under Siege, whose success made him bankable. With The Fugitive, he may be ready to enter the major league.