The Fugitive (1993)

The Fugitive is a 1993 American action thriller film based on the 1960s television series of the same name created by Roy Huggins. The film was directed by Andrew Davis and stars Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward, Joe Pantoliano, Andreas Katsulas, and Jeroen Krabbé. The screenplay was written by David Twohy and Jeb Stuart from a story by Twohy. After being framed for the murder of his wife and sentenced to death, Dr. Richard Kimble escapes from custody following a bus crash and sets out to find the real killer and clear his name while being hunted by the police and a team of U.S. Marshals.

The Fugitive premiered in Westwood on July 29, 1993 and was released in the United States and Sweden on August 6, 1993. It was a critical and commercial success, spending six weeks as the #1 film in the United States, and grossing nearly $370 million worldwide against a $44 million budget. It was the third-highest-grossing film of 1993 domestically with an estimated 44 million tickets sold in the U.S. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture; Jones won for Best Supporting Actor. It was followed by a 1998 spin-off, U.S. Marshals, in which Jones reprised his role as Deputy Marshal Gerard along with some others of his earlier Marshals team.

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Plot.

Prominent Chicago vascular surgeon Dr. Richard Kimble arrives home to find his wife, Helen, fatally injured by a man with a prosthetic arm. Kimble struggles with the killer, who escapes. The lack of evidence of a forced entry, Helen’s lucrative life insurance policy, and a misunderstood 911 call result in Kimble’s wrongful arrest after the cops refuse to believe his story about the killer. He is then convicted of first-degree murder and receives a death sentence. While being transported by bus to death row, Kimble’s fellow prisoners attempt an escape. In the pandemonium, two prisoners and the driver are killed,

sending the bus down a ravine and into the path of an oncoming train. Kimble saves a guard, escapes the collision, and flees as the train derails. An hour and a half later, U.S. Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard and his colleagues Renfro, Biggs, Newman, and Poole arrive at the crash site and launch a massive manhunt. Kimble sneaks into a hospital, where he obtains clothes and alters his appearance. He then drives off in an ambulance and is nearly captured in a highway tunnel but slips down a storm drain. Gerard follows and corners Kimble at the edge of a spillover above a dam;

Kimble proclaims his innocence and leaps into the water below and escapes. Kimble returns to Chicago to hunt for the real murderer, acquiring some money from his friend and colleague, Dr. Charles Nichols. He rents a cheap apartment and assumes the identity of a janitor to infiltrate Cook County Hospital’s prosthetic department, where he makes a list of names of male patients with prosthetic arms matching the killer’s. While there, Kimble forges new medical orders for a young trauma patient who was misdiagnosed, saving his life. Kimble escapes after a suspicious doctor confronts him and alerts the police.

Casting.

Harrison Ford was not originally cast for the role of Dr. Richard Kimble. Instead, a number of actors were auditioned for the part, including Alec Baldwin, Nick Nolte, Kevin Costner, and Michael Douglas. Nolte in particular felt he was too old for the role (though he is only a year older than Ford). Although the role of Gerard went to Tommy Lee Jones, Gene Hackman and Jon Voight were both considered for the role. The character of Dr. Nichols was recast for Jeroen Krabbé after the original actor who landed the role, Richard Jordan, fell ill with a brain tumor. Jordan subsequently died three weeks after the film’s release.

Filming.

Filming began in February and wrapped in mid-May. Filming locations no included Bryson City and Dillsboro, North Carolina; Blount County, Tennessee; and Chicago. 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 prison transport bus and freight train wreck scenes were filmed along the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad just outside their depot in Dillsboro; the wreckage can still be seen from the railroad’s excursion trains. The train crash, which cost $1 million to film, was shot in a single take using a real train with a locomotive whose engine had been removed. The wreck took several weeks to plan and was preceded by several test runs with a boxcar and a log car. 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 in which Kimble jumps from the dam

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Box office.

The Fugitive opened strongly at the US box office, grossing $23,758,855 in its first weekend from 2,340 theaters, taking the number one spot off of Rising Sun and surpassing Unforgiven to achieve a record August opening weekend. For six years, the film would hold this record until 1999 when it was surpassed by The Sixth Sense.[ It held the top spot for six weeks. It eventually went on to gross an estimated $183,875,760 in the United States and Canada, and $185 million in foreign revenue, for a worldwide total of $368,875,760. The Fugitive was the first major American film to be screened in the People’s Republic of China in nearly a decade, following restrictions on foreign films; First Blood (1982) was released there in 1985. The Fugitive grossed ¥25.8 million RMB in 1994, the highest for a Hollywood film in China, up until it was surpassed by True Lies (1994), which was released there in 1995.