The Fugitive (1993)
Directed by Andrew Davis
Wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to death, Richard Kimble escapes from the law in an attempt to find the real killer and clear his name.
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6 films that influenced The Fugitive
What critics say influenced The Fugitive
Consider his virtuoso opening chase sequence, which after the train crash leads to a series of drainage tunnels (echoes here of " The Third Man ") and finally to a spectacular dam, where Kimble risks death for a chance at freedom, and dives into the cascading waters in a moment that can only be called Wagnerian.
When a critic wistfully refers to a movie like The Fugitive or The Bourne Identity as “good old-fashioned entertainment,” there’s a good chance that this is the movie they recall.
Like Hitchcock's "North By Northwest," which involved Cary Grant in a similar situation, "The Fugitive" pits a blameless, everyday man against the forces of both good and evil, obliging him to survive by his wits alone.
Kimble, once free, is pursued through the woods, through drainage pipes, and finally to the edge of an enormous dam, at which point he has two choices: He can give himself up or take a daredevil leap that makes the one in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid look like hopscotch.
In the movie, the playing field has been shifted exclusively to Chicago, allowing cinematographer Michael Chapman ("Raging Bull") to bring home some dazzling aerial shots of the city at night.
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The sight recalls the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which Indy races to avoid a rolling boulder.
The crash sequence is as ambitious and electric as any I have seen, with Kimble fleeing for his life while a locomotive bears down on him (the echo here is of Ford's famous sequence in " Raiders of the Lost Ark " in which he is nearly crushed by a giant stone ball).
Davis' earlier work includes what national critics have called "the best Chuck Norris movie" ("Code of Silence") and "the best Steven Seagal movie" ("Under Siege").
Yet Davis, who once pulled off the considerable feat of getting a compelling performance out of Chuck Norris (in the 1985 police drama Code of Silence), also respects the audience's intelligence.
His gift was apparent in one of his earlier features, the Chuck Norris thriller " Code of Silence ," which remains Norris' best film and one of the best, most atmospheric uses of Chicago locations ever achieved.
“Code of Silence” is directed by Andy Davis, who went on to direct “The Fugitive” several years later.
Credit director Andrew Davis (who would go on to exploit the city in "The Fugitive" and "Above the Law"), a native who knows the neighborhoods well, masterminding a network of buildings and alleys for Eddie to investigate.