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Harrison Ford: "The Fugitive"

A guy is falsely accused of having murdered his wife, and he goes on the run. A U.S. Marshal is assigned to the case; let's call him Tommy Lee Jones.

The story runs on two tracks. Zone One: Our fugitive disguises his appearance and jumps over waterfalls and researches creepy one-armed men, in an effort to stay alive. (There is nothing inherently creepy about being one-armed; I'm just saying, in this particular movie, there is a group of suspects who happen to be *both* one-armed *and* creepy.)

Zone Two: Tommy Lee Jones barks commands and fires guns and decodes mysterious recorded phone conversations, in an effort to find the fugitive. And that's all. That's the entirety of the story.

When I was a kid, I felt particularly obsessed with the one-armed man, in the facts-blur-with-fiction style of childhood. "The Fugitive" came out in the early nineties, when I was especially captivated by big movies and big stories about death. (I also loved "Jurassic Park.")

Rewatching "The Fugitive," this weekend, with my husband, I wasn't in any way focused on the one-armed man. I was focused on Tommy Lee Jones. I suddenly understood that this movie is just one big showcase for Mr. Jones, who is truly the star, even though his Oscar win was for "Best Supporting Actor." It's hard to imagine an actor having more fun than TLJ in "The Fugitive." This guy is so absurdly charismatic, all the way through. Also, the script was a mess, so TLJ, evidently brilliant, wrote (some of) his own lines. Famously, in a confrontation, Harrison Ford shouts, "I didn't kill my wife!" And TLJ was supposed to say, "That's not my problem." But he went with something colder--something that used parallel structure. He widened his eyes and said, "I don't care."

Also, irritated by a "thinking" colleague, TLJ invented this gem: "Think me up one of them chocolate glazed donuts with sprinkles on top."

And, in another great moment, a colleague describes a mystery as "hinky." TLJ gets visibly annoyed, and begins doing improv. "HINKY? Can you use a better word? People don't say HINKY."

These tiny moments give the story its life and make it memorable.

I think I love TLJ's character in part because he is so fully in control of so many matters; nearly everything he says is a brisk, confident order. In this insane time, that kind of fantasy is particularly inspiring.

And some quick trivia: "The Fugitive" is the one and only movie based on a TV series to have earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination. It's weird to win a Best Acting Oscar for an action picture. Tommy Lee Jones did it, and Heath Ledger did it, and those are the examples I can recall, from recent history. The star could have been Alec Baldwin, and the U.S. Marshal could have been Gene Hackman.

How lucky we are that the movie we know now is the particular version that Ford, TLJ, et al. worked together to make.
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