Taglines: A murdered wife. A one-armed man. An obsessed detective. The chase begins.
The Fugitive movie storyline. A well respected Chicago surgeon Dr. Richard Kimble has found out that his wife, Helen, has been murdered ferociously in her own home. The police found Kimble and accused him of the murder. Then, Kimble (without Justifiable Reason) was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. However, on the way to prison, Kimble’s transport crashed. Kimble escapes and is now on the run. Deputy Samuel Gerard from Chicago takes charge of the chase of Kimble. Meanwhile, Kimble takes up his own investigation to find who really killed his wife, and to lure Gerard and his team into it as well.
The Fugitive is a 1993 American action-thriller film based on the 1960s television series of the same name created by Roy Huggins. It was directed by Andrew Davis and stars Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. After being wrongfully convicted for the murder of his wife, Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) escapes from custody and sets out to prove his innocence while pursued by a team of U.S. Marshals led by Deputy Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones).
Filming locations for the motion picture included Cherokee, North Carolina; Tennessee; Chicago; and Dillsboro, North Carolina. Although almost half of the film is set in rural Illinois, a large portion of the principal filming was actually shot in Jackson County, North Carolina in the Great Smoky Mountains. The scene involving Kimble’s prison transport bus and a freight train wreck was filmed along the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad just outside Dillsboro, North Carolina.
Riders on the excursion railroad can still see the wreckage on the way out of the Dillsboro depot. The train crash cost $1 million to film. The train used during the filming was real, and was done in a single take. Scenes in the hospital after Kimble initially escapes were filmed at Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva, North Carolina. Cheoah Dam in Deals Gap was the location of the scene where Kimble jumps from the dam.
The rest of the film was shot in Chicago, Illinois, including some of the dam scenes, which were filmed in the remains of the Chicago freight tunnels. The character Sykes lived in the historic Pullman neighborhood of Chicago. Harrison Ford used the pay phone in the Pullman Pub, at which point he climbs a ladder and runs down the roofline of the historic rowhouses. During the St. Patrick’s Day Parade chase scene, Mayor Richard M. Daley and Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris are briefly shown as participants.
The film’s musical score was composed by James Newton Howard; Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the music “hugely effective”. Elektra Records released an album featuring selections from the score on August 31, 1993. La-La Land Records later released a 2-disc, expanded and remastered edition of the score, featuring over an hour of previously unreleased music, tracks from the original soundtrack, and alternate cues.
The Fugitive premiered in the United States on August 6, 1993, and was a major critical and commercial success. It was the third-highest-grossing film of 1993 domestically, with an estimated 44 million tickets sold in the US. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture; Jones won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. It was followed by a 1998 sequel, U.S. Marshals, in which Jones reprised his role as Gerard.
The Fugitive (1993)
Directed by: Andrew Davis
Starring: Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward, Julianne Moore, Joe Pantoliano, Andreas Katsulas, Jeroen Krabbé, Daniel Roebuck, John Drummond
Screenplay by: David Twohy, Jeb Stuart
Production Design by: J. Dennis Washington
Cinematography by: Michael Chapman
Film Editing by: Dennis Virkler, David Finfer, Dean Goodhill, Don Brochu, Richard Nord, Dov Hoenig
Costume Design by: Aggie Guerard Rodgers
Set Decoration by: Rick Gentz
Art Direction by: Maher Ahmad
Music by: James Newton Howard
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for a murder and other action sequences in an adventure setting.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: August 6, 1993
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