CANON
FilmAndrew Davis, 1993
The Fugitive
ABOUT THE WORK
“I did not kill my wife.”
Richard Kimble survives because of his ingenuity and his ability to do the one next thing.
That sounds obvious until you think about how many action movies require their heroes to become physically indestructible.
Kimble is not.
He is a doctor dropped into a problem well beyond medicine, and he approaches it the way a good professional approaches any unfamiliar system: one step at a time. Observing and testing.
Tommy Lee Jones’s Samuel Gerard is doing the same thing from the other direction.
That symmetry gives The Fugitive its unusual satisfaction and pleasure. Both men are playing extraordinary chess and thinking hard about the next move the other might make.
Gerard is relentless because that is his job. Kimble is resourceful because his life depends on it.
The film becomes a contest between two forms of competence that slowly converge on the same truth.
The Fugitive believes intelligence is cinematic.
Richard Kimble survives because of his ingenuity and his ability to do the one next thing.
That sounds obvious until you think about how many action movies require their heroes to become physically indestructible.
Kimble is not.
He is a doctor dropped into a problem well beyond medicine, and he approaches it the way a good professional approaches any unfamiliar system: one step at a time. Observing and testing.
Tommy Lee Jones’s Samuel Gerard is doing the same thing from the other direction.
That symmetry gives The Fugitive its unusual satisfaction and pleasure. Both men are playing extraordinary chess and thinking hard about the next move the other might make.
Gerard is relentless because that is his job. Kimble is resourceful because his life depends on it.
The film becomes a contest between two forms of competence that slowly converge on the same truth.
The Fugitive believes intelligence is cinematic.