Thoughts on The Fugitive (1993)
Aug. 14th, 2023 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doranwenI first watched The Fugitive probably around 15 years after it came out. (I was too young when it first premiered, and it wasn't until my early adulthood that I saw a lot of these sorts of films.) At the time, I enjoyed it - but found it so suspenseful that it was 15 minutes after it ended before I could stop shaking. I didn't think much about it after that, for quite a long while.
Until more recently, when it suddenly hit me that it would be interesting to watch again. And not too long after that I poked on AO3 and saw the tag for it. "Wait, there's fic for The Fugitive? I gotta see this." Most of the fic involved a romantic/sexual relationship between Gerard and Kimble which doesn't work for me at all. (If it does for you, well, it just goes to show we all have different tastes!) But after filtering out the M/M, there were a few good friendship fics - some outstandingly so - and I was suddenly hooked on the friendship between them. I've learned from long experience that the only thing to do with an obsession like this is ride it out and enjoy the ride, lol.
Which meant I had to rewatch the film and start paying attention to every bit of body language and facial expressions. I miss most of those in my first watch of something, because being on the autism spectrum makes it rather hard to pick up on all of that in real life - it goes by way too fast and I just can't process it all. Fortunately, unlike real life, it's possible to replay a scene over and over, and focus on a different part of the body, or face, every time. "Wait, was that a grin? Let me see it again." It means that I can start to piece together what's happening internally, at least a little.
In reading the fics, I started rambling on about the film in the comments to the author, which I'm sure they enjoyed having someone else who adored the film as well, but honestly, that sort of analysis belongs somewhere like here. So I decided I ought to write up some of my thoughts, a bit of meta.
Quoting from my comments, with some editing and additions:
Rewatching a bit of the movie, and I wonder what movie people were watching, who thought Ford was all flat and couldn't act. [There are some IMDB reviews that actually claimed it showed Ford couldn't act. Me: Were they blind???] Did they think his character should've been like Tommy Lee Jones's, making wisecracks and quips? Or that he should be all super expressive in his face? It wouldn't make any sense for Kimble - he's supposed to be a quiet character who's grieving, traumatized by everything he's gone through, and the only thing driving him is to figure out what happened and bring it to light. Ford plays that *perfectly*. Initially with his escape he's nervous, jumpy, single-focused on the next thing and the next thing (get non-prison garb, treat injuries, disguise self as far as possible, etc.). And when he realizes he has no escape in the sewer tunnels, he's just crying out with his pain (the iconic scene "I didn't kill my wife!" / "I don't care!") and that wasn't flat at all - he's shaking, every line of his pain visible. You can see the wheels spin as he's deciding he's got to try to jump, because otherwise he'll just die anyway (with the death penalty), at least that way he might survive and solve the puzzle. There's the franticness and post-adrenaline crash after the cops arrest the landlady's son, practically a panic attack right there. And then he sort of settles into a driven mentality, where the only thing in his mind is what he has to do next to accomplish his goals, and he can't afford to wallow in grief (except in sleep when he dreams of Helen and her death).
I absolutely love the scene where he's watching the doctors deal with all the kids from the bus crash, and the duty doctor tells the other one to check the film, and you see him focusing in on that, on the kid's distress and muttering "check the film" to himself because he can see the other doctor never really did - he did such a quick glance that he didn't give it the time necessary to really read it right, and he wants to tell them that so badly but can't do it without drawing undue attention to himself. And when he starts wheeling the kid and talking to him, it's like he wakes up. Suddenly he's animated, suddenly he's back in the days when he saved lives, when he could do something that helped others, and you can see him on pins and needles waiting for the doctor to look at the chart and take the boy into surgery. It's like a little burst of exhilaration in the middle of his dreary existence.
I love when Sam calls his name on the stairs - because you can see him look up at that recognition of being called by his actual name, and then realize WHO, and the adrenaline kicks in as he flees. I also really love the scene with Kathy, when he's sort of quietly happy (he's got a bit of a smile on his face!) to see a friend, someone who hugs him (something he's not experienced for AGES)… and then the moment when Kathy tells him Lentz died, and half the samples were approved the day he died… and when she mentions someone with access had to do that, you see the realization sink in. His whole face crumples with the betrayal, and the way he can barely say "to see a friend" with that sinking recognition that the person he thought was a friend was behind his wife's death (and, consequently, his being sent to death row for it), that all of this was due to Nichols, someone he had trusted. It's all THERE for anyone to see who has eyes and can recognize that not everyone shows everything dramatically on their face. Kimble certainly wouldn't, and Ford plays his full gamut of emotions to *perfection*. There are a lot of actors out there who couldn't show all that though just their face and body like Ford did.
And then in the laundry, you can see his reaction as Sam calls out that he knows about Nichols and how he got in without the forced entry, it's like the missing piece slots into place and he almost relaxes a bit, that someone else gets it, someone else knows the truth, it's not just him, Sam followed the clues from Sykes' place. And when he stops Nichols and Sam has his gun on him and then lowers it, it's like Richard can only think of one thing to say, he has to communicate to someone (and Sam's there) who really killed his wife, it's what he's been trying to accomplish all this time. The intensity and drive of that is so strong that even though he's about to collapse it's hard for it to really sink in that he was *heard* this time. He's still in a state of shock of sorts when he's ushered into the back of the car, and Sam orders him to present his hands, that it takes him a second to process what he's being asked, and there's this bewilderment as the cuffs are removed and he's given the ice pack. That part doesn't take any guesswork because his line "I thought you didn't care" explains that pretty thoroughly - but I like that he pulls a little out of the shock as he says it, memory overriding the overwhelmingness of all he's been through in the past few hours.
The effects all of this leaves on Richard would have to be immense. The trauma of what happened to his wife, being practically railroaded to the death penalty, having a chance to escape (nearly dying in the process) and then having to keep on the run for months, trying to find who really did kill his wife… and then finding out it was one of his friends who was behind it… all of that leaves deep-rooted scars that aren't going to go away that easily. His ability to trust anyone - except for Kathy (and Bones, maybe, who seems nice enough - but he's not close with Richard at all, given that he had to ask about the "thing with your wife" and didn't know every bit of it) and Sam… It's ironic, maybe, but even with knowing they were trying to find him, there was a level of trust that built up between them. That call from Sykes' house was a big step in trusting them, as he trusted them to follow the evidence and see where it led. Anyway, I think that Kathy and Sam are about the only people he really truly trusts, and they're possibly the only people who care specifically about Richard himself. No one else pays that much attention, or truly cares about the man behind the headlines. And I'm still hit with the sheer immensity of that betrayal - how Kimble could ever trust anyone again is amazing, given that betrayal and the abandonment by literally almost everyone. It makes absolute perfect sense that he would trust Sam, if anyone other than Kathy, because Sam has never truly betrayed him. He knew Sam's objectives, he knew he could count on him to follow those through, and he used that when he called him from Sykes' house.
As far as Sam goes, the author pointed out to me that US Marshals aren't supposed to know stuff about their fugitives beyond what they need to catch them. I figure it's because they don't want them getting drawn into believing them and helping them out. Which Sam doesn't, in the sense that he doesn't actually help Richard escape, he really is trying to catch him. But he realizes in the process that the best way to find Richard is to figure out what he's thinking, what he's trying to do (so I'm not sure how much he actually breaks the rules of his job - though why *did* he do a walkthrough of Richard's old home and compare to Richard's statement about the one-armed man, anyway?) - and as he does so, he starts to uncover what Richard is turning over - and he has to recognize that either Richard is truly insane or he truly believes he did not kill his wife and that a one-armed man did it. And Richard was smart enough to disappear and go to another city, start a new life if he had to, and dodge everything. The fact that he doesn't, that he pursues trying to find a one-armed man, even though it means going into some of the riskier places… Like Cosmo's lines: "The place is crawling with cops, right? Everybody's looking for Richard Kimble, right? So why would a guy be stupid enough to hang out in the trauma ward and play Mother Teresa?" Cosmo doesn't get it there, but I think Sam does, a little. He's figuring out that Richard truly believes a one-armed man did it, and he doesn't think Richard is crazy, which means he's almost certainly innocent. The next few months are tough on *him* as he's trying to figure out how to bring Richard in but also get the real bad guy, because down deep he really wants to do that, for justice's sake and for Richard's sake, because he saw the pain in Richard's eyes and heard it in his voice, in the storm drains. At least, that's my take on the whole thing. I feel like that wormed under Sam's skin and he can't get past that. Particularly when Richard jumped. I keep watching that scene over and Sam's grin! At the same time he's incredulous but still sort of grinning at the whole thing. I love his look at the pic of Helen in his office, on the window. I feel like he's already starting to believe Richard there, putting what he saw and heard against that.
Though I actually think it's not so much that he believes Richard by the time he's interviewing Julianne Moore's character (duty doctor who tells Richard as the janitor to take the kid to observation and grabs his ID when she realizes he changed the orders), but that he *knows* something isn't adding up, because Richard's behavior isn't that of a guilty person trying to dodge the cops and do what he wants - it's of someone who genuinely believes he's innocent and is trying to prove it. It's got to be hard for him to believe that, because generally I'd imagine "I don't care" is exactly his attitude toward all the criminals he's trying to catch, as you said his job requires. But with Richard his gut's arguing very loudly that something's not the same here, and it's warring with his years of experience and habits. And you can see when he hears her say "he [Richard] saved his [the boy's] life", he was sort of expecting that, while at the same time it's puzzling him. Like, it takes him a bit to really have it sink in that Richard is truly innocent, but underneath his gut says "yes, of course Richard would do that". Reconciling his head and gut on that takes a good part of the movie for Sam.
Which leaves me wanting more fic, LOL. I already rec'd the two favorites for this fandom here (look under the Friendship section) and there were two or there other good ones, but most out there focus on US Marshals - which I haven't seen and am not interested in seeing, as it wasn't *just* the team of marshals that I enjoyed watching, it was specifically them and Ford as Kimble. Without Kimble… nah.
Is there space for more fic? You bet! For one, there's a gap in the film between when Sam says "It's over now. You know, I'm glad. I need the rest." and when they're taking Richard out to the car. During that time, he's been treated for wounds (you can see a steri-strip or whatever it's called on his eyebrow) and cuffs put on. Not a single fic deals with that time period. I'd love to see the other marshals getting a face-to-face with Richard at that point - only Sam came close enough to call his name or talk to him (on the phone). And I'd love to see Sam's POV of that whole time, getting Richard treated and all that.
The other bit that there's very very little about - brief summaries or mentions in the fic I found - is the time immediately after the film ends, until Richard's exonerated. We know he would be - CPD would be under major fire to do so, given it was an ex-cop that actually did it, and killed a current cop. It would look like they were covering Sykes' involvement in Helen's murder even if they had nothing to do with it. So there would be tremendous pressure to open the case back up and investigate properly - and Sam can testify all the times Richard *didn't* kill people when he could've, and actually saved Sam's life from the real murderer (because Nichols murdered Helen as much as Sykes did). But how long would it have taken? What would Richard have gone through in the meantime? How much would Sam have been there to see it or interact with him? I'd LOVE to see that.
Write it, you say? I wish I could. But not only do I not have the time for it (see Yahoo Groups as well as other projects that I absolutely must accomplish, and my work is ramping up to keep me super busy), I also don't have a good enough grasp on the characters. This post might look like I did - as I've focused a lot on various internal motivations and feelings - but I don't know how they speak or everything they'd do. It's just not there. So I'm more than happy to chat with someone writing any of these ideas or more - I just can't write it myself. And it's unlikely I'll see fics for any of these ideas or beyond, but if there are, you can bet I'll be super delighted.
Are you a fan of The Fugitive? Feel free to comment here and ramble on about what you love. :D I didn't even mention the music above, and that's fantastic too…
Until more recently, when it suddenly hit me that it would be interesting to watch again. And not too long after that I poked on AO3 and saw the tag for it. "Wait, there's fic for The Fugitive? I gotta see this." Most of the fic involved a romantic/sexual relationship between Gerard and Kimble which doesn't work for me at all. (If it does for you, well, it just goes to show we all have different tastes!) But after filtering out the M/M, there were a few good friendship fics - some outstandingly so - and I was suddenly hooked on the friendship between them. I've learned from long experience that the only thing to do with an obsession like this is ride it out and enjoy the ride, lol.
Which meant I had to rewatch the film and start paying attention to every bit of body language and facial expressions. I miss most of those in my first watch of something, because being on the autism spectrum makes it rather hard to pick up on all of that in real life - it goes by way too fast and I just can't process it all. Fortunately, unlike real life, it's possible to replay a scene over and over, and focus on a different part of the body, or face, every time. "Wait, was that a grin? Let me see it again." It means that I can start to piece together what's happening internally, at least a little.
In reading the fics, I started rambling on about the film in the comments to the author, which I'm sure they enjoyed having someone else who adored the film as well, but honestly, that sort of analysis belongs somewhere like here. So I decided I ought to write up some of my thoughts, a bit of meta.
Quoting from my comments, with some editing and additions:
Rewatching a bit of the movie, and I wonder what movie people were watching, who thought Ford was all flat and couldn't act. [There are some IMDB reviews that actually claimed it showed Ford couldn't act. Me: Were they blind???] Did they think his character should've been like Tommy Lee Jones's, making wisecracks and quips? Or that he should be all super expressive in his face? It wouldn't make any sense for Kimble - he's supposed to be a quiet character who's grieving, traumatized by everything he's gone through, and the only thing driving him is to figure out what happened and bring it to light. Ford plays that *perfectly*. Initially with his escape he's nervous, jumpy, single-focused on the next thing and the next thing (get non-prison garb, treat injuries, disguise self as far as possible, etc.). And when he realizes he has no escape in the sewer tunnels, he's just crying out with his pain (the iconic scene "I didn't kill my wife!" / "I don't care!") and that wasn't flat at all - he's shaking, every line of his pain visible. You can see the wheels spin as he's deciding he's got to try to jump, because otherwise he'll just die anyway (with the death penalty), at least that way he might survive and solve the puzzle. There's the franticness and post-adrenaline crash after the cops arrest the landlady's son, practically a panic attack right there. And then he sort of settles into a driven mentality, where the only thing in his mind is what he has to do next to accomplish his goals, and he can't afford to wallow in grief (except in sleep when he dreams of Helen and her death).
I absolutely love the scene where he's watching the doctors deal with all the kids from the bus crash, and the duty doctor tells the other one to check the film, and you see him focusing in on that, on the kid's distress and muttering "check the film" to himself because he can see the other doctor never really did - he did such a quick glance that he didn't give it the time necessary to really read it right, and he wants to tell them that so badly but can't do it without drawing undue attention to himself. And when he starts wheeling the kid and talking to him, it's like he wakes up. Suddenly he's animated, suddenly he's back in the days when he saved lives, when he could do something that helped others, and you can see him on pins and needles waiting for the doctor to look at the chart and take the boy into surgery. It's like a little burst of exhilaration in the middle of his dreary existence.
I love when Sam calls his name on the stairs - because you can see him look up at that recognition of being called by his actual name, and then realize WHO, and the adrenaline kicks in as he flees. I also really love the scene with Kathy, when he's sort of quietly happy (he's got a bit of a smile on his face!) to see a friend, someone who hugs him (something he's not experienced for AGES)… and then the moment when Kathy tells him Lentz died, and half the samples were approved the day he died… and when she mentions someone with access had to do that, you see the realization sink in. His whole face crumples with the betrayal, and the way he can barely say "to see a friend" with that sinking recognition that the person he thought was a friend was behind his wife's death (and, consequently, his being sent to death row for it), that all of this was due to Nichols, someone he had trusted. It's all THERE for anyone to see who has eyes and can recognize that not everyone shows everything dramatically on their face. Kimble certainly wouldn't, and Ford plays his full gamut of emotions to *perfection*. There are a lot of actors out there who couldn't show all that though just their face and body like Ford did.
And then in the laundry, you can see his reaction as Sam calls out that he knows about Nichols and how he got in without the forced entry, it's like the missing piece slots into place and he almost relaxes a bit, that someone else gets it, someone else knows the truth, it's not just him, Sam followed the clues from Sykes' place. And when he stops Nichols and Sam has his gun on him and then lowers it, it's like Richard can only think of one thing to say, he has to communicate to someone (and Sam's there) who really killed his wife, it's what he's been trying to accomplish all this time. The intensity and drive of that is so strong that even though he's about to collapse it's hard for it to really sink in that he was *heard* this time. He's still in a state of shock of sorts when he's ushered into the back of the car, and Sam orders him to present his hands, that it takes him a second to process what he's being asked, and there's this bewilderment as the cuffs are removed and he's given the ice pack. That part doesn't take any guesswork because his line "I thought you didn't care" explains that pretty thoroughly - but I like that he pulls a little out of the shock as he says it, memory overriding the overwhelmingness of all he's been through in the past few hours.
The effects all of this leaves on Richard would have to be immense. The trauma of what happened to his wife, being practically railroaded to the death penalty, having a chance to escape (nearly dying in the process) and then having to keep on the run for months, trying to find who really did kill his wife… and then finding out it was one of his friends who was behind it… all of that leaves deep-rooted scars that aren't going to go away that easily. His ability to trust anyone - except for Kathy (and Bones, maybe, who seems nice enough - but he's not close with Richard at all, given that he had to ask about the "thing with your wife" and didn't know every bit of it) and Sam… It's ironic, maybe, but even with knowing they were trying to find him, there was a level of trust that built up between them. That call from Sykes' house was a big step in trusting them, as he trusted them to follow the evidence and see where it led. Anyway, I think that Kathy and Sam are about the only people he really truly trusts, and they're possibly the only people who care specifically about Richard himself. No one else pays that much attention, or truly cares about the man behind the headlines. And I'm still hit with the sheer immensity of that betrayal - how Kimble could ever trust anyone again is amazing, given that betrayal and the abandonment by literally almost everyone. It makes absolute perfect sense that he would trust Sam, if anyone other than Kathy, because Sam has never truly betrayed him. He knew Sam's objectives, he knew he could count on him to follow those through, and he used that when he called him from Sykes' house.
As far as Sam goes, the author pointed out to me that US Marshals aren't supposed to know stuff about their fugitives beyond what they need to catch them. I figure it's because they don't want them getting drawn into believing them and helping them out. Which Sam doesn't, in the sense that he doesn't actually help Richard escape, he really is trying to catch him. But he realizes in the process that the best way to find Richard is to figure out what he's thinking, what he's trying to do (so I'm not sure how much he actually breaks the rules of his job - though why *did* he do a walkthrough of Richard's old home and compare to Richard's statement about the one-armed man, anyway?) - and as he does so, he starts to uncover what Richard is turning over - and he has to recognize that either Richard is truly insane or he truly believes he did not kill his wife and that a one-armed man did it. And Richard was smart enough to disappear and go to another city, start a new life if he had to, and dodge everything. The fact that he doesn't, that he pursues trying to find a one-armed man, even though it means going into some of the riskier places… Like Cosmo's lines: "The place is crawling with cops, right? Everybody's looking for Richard Kimble, right? So why would a guy be stupid enough to hang out in the trauma ward and play Mother Teresa?" Cosmo doesn't get it there, but I think Sam does, a little. He's figuring out that Richard truly believes a one-armed man did it, and he doesn't think Richard is crazy, which means he's almost certainly innocent. The next few months are tough on *him* as he's trying to figure out how to bring Richard in but also get the real bad guy, because down deep he really wants to do that, for justice's sake and for Richard's sake, because he saw the pain in Richard's eyes and heard it in his voice, in the storm drains. At least, that's my take on the whole thing. I feel like that wormed under Sam's skin and he can't get past that. Particularly when Richard jumped. I keep watching that scene over and Sam's grin! At the same time he's incredulous but still sort of grinning at the whole thing. I love his look at the pic of Helen in his office, on the window. I feel like he's already starting to believe Richard there, putting what he saw and heard against that.
Though I actually think it's not so much that he believes Richard by the time he's interviewing Julianne Moore's character (duty doctor who tells Richard as the janitor to take the kid to observation and grabs his ID when she realizes he changed the orders), but that he *knows* something isn't adding up, because Richard's behavior isn't that of a guilty person trying to dodge the cops and do what he wants - it's of someone who genuinely believes he's innocent and is trying to prove it. It's got to be hard for him to believe that, because generally I'd imagine "I don't care" is exactly his attitude toward all the criminals he's trying to catch, as you said his job requires. But with Richard his gut's arguing very loudly that something's not the same here, and it's warring with his years of experience and habits. And you can see when he hears her say "he [Richard] saved his [the boy's] life", he was sort of expecting that, while at the same time it's puzzling him. Like, it takes him a bit to really have it sink in that Richard is truly innocent, but underneath his gut says "yes, of course Richard would do that". Reconciling his head and gut on that takes a good part of the movie for Sam.
Which leaves me wanting more fic, LOL. I already rec'd the two favorites for this fandom here (look under the Friendship section) and there were two or there other good ones, but most out there focus on US Marshals - which I haven't seen and am not interested in seeing, as it wasn't *just* the team of marshals that I enjoyed watching, it was specifically them and Ford as Kimble. Without Kimble… nah.
Is there space for more fic? You bet! For one, there's a gap in the film between when Sam says "It's over now. You know, I'm glad. I need the rest." and when they're taking Richard out to the car. During that time, he's been treated for wounds (you can see a steri-strip or whatever it's called on his eyebrow) and cuffs put on. Not a single fic deals with that time period. I'd love to see the other marshals getting a face-to-face with Richard at that point - only Sam came close enough to call his name or talk to him (on the phone). And I'd love to see Sam's POV of that whole time, getting Richard treated and all that.
The other bit that there's very very little about - brief summaries or mentions in the fic I found - is the time immediately after the film ends, until Richard's exonerated. We know he would be - CPD would be under major fire to do so, given it was an ex-cop that actually did it, and killed a current cop. It would look like they were covering Sykes' involvement in Helen's murder even if they had nothing to do with it. So there would be tremendous pressure to open the case back up and investigate properly - and Sam can testify all the times Richard *didn't* kill people when he could've, and actually saved Sam's life from the real murderer (because Nichols murdered Helen as much as Sykes did). But how long would it have taken? What would Richard have gone through in the meantime? How much would Sam have been there to see it or interact with him? I'd LOVE to see that.
Write it, you say? I wish I could. But not only do I not have the time for it (see Yahoo Groups as well as other projects that I absolutely must accomplish, and my work is ramping up to keep me super busy), I also don't have a good enough grasp on the characters. This post might look like I did - as I've focused a lot on various internal motivations and feelings - but I don't know how they speak or everything they'd do. It's just not there. So I'm more than happy to chat with someone writing any of these ideas or more - I just can't write it myself. And it's unlikely I'll see fics for any of these ideas or beyond, but if there are, you can bet I'll be super delighted.
Are you a fan of The Fugitive? Feel free to comment here and ramble on about what you love. :D I didn't even mention the music above, and that's fantastic too…
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Date: 2023-08-23 09:09 pm (UTC)