Fugitive, The

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"The Fugitive" from 1993 is one of the best films Harrison Ford or Tommy Lee Jones ever made, and, more important, it is one of the best action-thrillers of the past few decades.

I admit I never cared much for the old David Janssen TV show on which it's based. Once the premise was established of an innocent man on the run for murder, there wasn't a lot left to do week after week except repeat small variations on the same theme. But the movie is something else. Even when we know full well what is basically going to happen, we are never quite sure just how it is going to happen or when, thanks to a smart script by Jeb Stuart and David Twohy and to some imaginative direction by Andrew Davis. Its new, 1080x1920 HD-DVD presentation does justice to what is surely a modern classic.

The plot is straightforward and by now pretty well known. A Chicago surgeon, Dr. Richard Kimble, played by Ford, is framed and convicted for the murder of his wife (Sela Ward). Through an inadvertent series of incidents on the way to prison, Kimble escapes. His job through the course of the film is to elude capture and prove his innocence. Of course, in order to prove his innocence, he has to find his wife's real murderer, the infamous one-armed man or whomever else is behind the crime. What should he do first, where should he go, and whom should he trust? Doggedly pursuing him is Deputy U.S. Marshall Sam Gerard, played by Jones, who grudgingly gains respect for his quarry and gradually comes to sympathize with him.

The movie succeeds on a number of levels. First, it's largely plausible and intelligent, something a lot of action dramas disregard in their attempt to shock or thrill an audience. Jumping from the top of a dam is a bit of a stretch, as is the saving of a young boy's life, but mostly the movie stays in the range of believability.

Second, the characters are three-dimensional, not the usual cardboard cutouts one finds in these sorts of things. Ford and Jones make admirable adversaries, Ford a resourceful but vulnerable hero and Jones a tough and relentless cop ("I don't bargain") with a touch of compassion he doesn't want many people to see. Jones won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the part and went on to reprise the role in "U.S. Marshals."

Third, the movie is outright suspenseful and exciting, thanks in part to its superb directing (Andrew Davis) and editing, and that's what most people want in an action film. It's hard to forget the spectacular train wreck (using a real train and bus, amazingly, no miniatures), the aforementioned dam and waterfall stunt, the St. Patrick's Day parade, and similar tension-filled scenes. 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.

It is a tribute to Ford, Jones, and the rest of the filmmakers that "The Fugitive" stands up so well to the best adventure movies in memory. In fact, it was recently voted the thirty-third best thriller of all time by the American Film Institute. Oh, yes, and a good musical background track by James Newton Howard helps, too. It's always there underlining the action, never calling attention to itself or annoying us with its bluster.

Video:
I did something a little different in viewing this HD-DVD than I've done in the past. Rather than first spending time comparing the standard-definition and high-definition versions side-by-side in selected scenes, I watched the HD disc straight through, with another fan of the movie, the Wife-O-Meter, at my side. Neither of us had seen the movie more than a year, but we both remarked how well the new HD transfer looked. Still, it didn't seem as clean or detailed to either of us as the HD-DVD of Mel Brooks's "Blazing Saddles" had looked when we watched it the day before. By the end of "The Fugitive" we had both become so caught up in the movie and so accustomed to its appearance, though, we had pretty much forgotten it was even in HD.

Then I did my comparisons with the standard-definition disc. Yes, there was a difference I hadn't expected. Not a big difference, but a definite and expected advantage for the HD-DVD. By comparison, the SD disc looked slightly flat and washed out. The texture, especially in faces, seemed to have been drained out of the SD picture.

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