Andrew Davis’ The Fugitive is the perfect example of how to work a perfect cat and mouse chase. The movie is about a wrongfully accused Dr. Richard Kimble who flees from a train crash and tries to prove his innocence. He is being pursued by Sergeant Samuel Gerard, who uses his “big dog” mentality to put away bad guys. This movie is shows how to flawlessly make it so that the audience is cheering for both sides, for Gerard to catch and for Kimble to escape.
Harrison Ford stars in this movie as Dr. Richard Kimble, and he yet again shows his everyman persona and just likeability throughout the course of the movie. It feels as if every turn, we are rooting for him to escape and get one piece closer to the puzzle.
The same can be said for Samuel Gerard, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who uses his charisma and tough guy temperament to swoon the audience into rooting for him. We are torn as we see him get one step closer to catching Kimble over the course of the movie, but the doc is always one step ahead.
As we get further and further down into the course of the movie, one can get the sense that Samuel Gerard actually starts to believe Richard’s story about the one armed man and his innocence. When he reopens the case and goes through each step himself, it all comes together as he realises who is behind it all: Charles Nichols.
Nichols, who is played by Jeroen Krabbe, seems to be an ally to Richard at first. He gives him some change on the side of the road, and that’s all we really know about him. We get the sense that he is an all-around good guy and here to help Dr. Richard Kimble, until about 20 minutes left in the movie. When Kimble figures out that he switched the samples and also had the keys to his car that night, the movie goes from already very good to magnificent.
While this film is mostly related to other movies like No Country For Old Men and The Silence of the Lambs, this film that this most reminds me of is Heat. They are both extremely similar in the way that you are rooting for both sides to come out on top. In Heat, we are on the tip of our toes throughout the movie, constantly waiting for what comes next.
We want to see both Robert De Niro and Al Pacino to pull out on top, just like with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. We wait, savoring each scene like it’s our last as we watch beauty unfold in front of us.
While other thrillers are a slow burn into a final battle, The Fugitive gives you a little over two hours of an action packed drama and thriller. We see the action from the get-go, with a thrilling bus crash that leads to a Kimble escape. We also get a solid second act of the movie where there isn’t a fight scene necessarily, and instead Dr. Kimble trying to find the missing piece to his wife’s murder.
From all the thriller movies, and cat and mouse chases throughout the years, this one stands out from the rest. Why? It may be because of Jones and Ford working side and side against each other like a chess match, each looking for the others move. It could be because of the everyman feeling you get from Dr. Richard Kimble and also Gerard and his crew. Any way you look at it, this movie is simply put, an incredible work of art.
