The Fugitive (1993)

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Overview:

Based on the television series The Fugitive follows Dr. Richard Kimble, played by Harrison Ford, comes home to find his wife murdered and her death pinned on him. After escaping from a prison bus Kimble decides to run from the US Marshals, led by Deputy Samuel Gerard played by Tommy Lee Jones. Kimble must both allude capture and find out who truly killed his wife.

The film, released in 1993, was directed by Andrew Davis and achieved overall success with critics and at the box office.

Plot Summary

Dr. Richard Kimble is a successful vascular surgeon living in Chicago with his wife Helen (Sela Ward). On the way home from a fundraiser, Richard gets called in to assist on a surgery. Richard returns home to find romantic hints from Helen leading him to the bedroom. When he arrives there, he is attacked by a one-armed man. After fighting off the one-armed man, Richard finds that Helen had been attacked and is dying on the bedroom floor. The subsequent police investigation determines that Richard killed Helen for the insurance money. In court, Helen’s emergency phone call recording, which seems ambiguous given Richard’s defense, actually seals the prosecution’s case. Richard is sentenced to death and is sent to a prison in downstate Illinois.

On the transfer trip, several other prisoners plot to take over the bus. The plan fails when the armed guard shoots the bus driver, causing it to lose control and roll off the roadway and onto a railroad track. The men in the bus are terrified to find that a train is heading for them, and a scramble to escape ensues. Kimble manages to get an injured guard out of the bus and safely away from the oncoming train. Kimble himself barely escapes the bus before the train hits it, which results in a spectacular wreck.

Now on the run, Kimble sets out to prove his innocence. Charged with the task of finding him is a team of U.S. Marshals led by Deputy Sam Gerard, who relentlessly chase Kimble from the wilderness of downstate Illinois to the maze that is the city of Chicago.

Kimble uses hospitals to treat his injuries and piece together the facts of his case. He also calls upon his colleagues Dr. Charles Nichols (Jeroen Krabbé) and Dr. Kathy Wahlund (Jane Lynch, before she was famous) for help. He uses a fake ID to gain access to hospital records and determines the identity of the one-armed man by tracking his type of prosthetic and by making a few shrewd phony phone calls. He also manages to avoid capture by Gerard, most notably by disappearing into the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Kimble’s research leads him to two startling discoveries: a giant pharmaceutical company was intent on killing him, and not his wife; and that someone very close to him was pulling all the strings in the conspiracy. The leader of the conspiracy again calls upon the one-armed man to dispatch of Kimble, as he has learned that Kimble can prove the crimes. Essentially everyone is looking for everyone else, which leads to several encounters on the elevated train and inside the Chicago Hilton and Towers.

Kimble has successfully led Gerard and his team to the conclusion that he did not murder his wife. Gerard assures Kimble of this during the final encounter in the hotel’s laundry facility. In the end, the one-armed man and leader of the conspiracy are arrested, Kimble becomes a free man again, and Gerard can finally get some rest.