The Fugitive

The Fugitive (1993) follows a doctor accused of murdering his wife and the federal marshal chasing him. Richard Kimble is a surgeon sentenced to death. The bus taking him to prison crashes and he escapes. He hunts for his wife's real killer to prove his innocence while a marshal named Sam Gerard hunts him. The smartest choice is not making Gerard a villain. Gerard is not interested in whether Kimble is innocent; his job is catching fugitives. He says so outright in one scene, and that line was Tommy Lee Jones's improvisation. Jones won the supporting actor Oscar for it. The bus and train collision is real. No miniatures: at Dillsboro in North Carolina an actual bus was placed in front of an actual train and the rest was left to physics. The scene cost around 1.5 million dollars, a crew of seventy spent two months preparing it, and it was shot in one take. The wreck stayed there. The railway asked for the remains to be left, reckoning they would draw tourists; the wreckage still sits in that valley and can be seen from the river excursions. The film is adapted from the sixties television series. It runs 130 minutes. Good for: chase thrillers, nineties Hollywood, and performance. Less good for: the solution to the mystery is simple and the last section turns ordinary.