Entertainment
Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones’ 10/10 Action Thriller Has a Forgotten Sequel No One Asked For
In 1993, Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones teamed up for The Fugitive, one of the year’s biggest and best movies. The story about doctor Richard Kimble searching for the one-armed man who killed his wife earned several Oscar nominations, and Jones won a Best Supporting Actor trophy for his work. Three decades later, The Fugitive is regarded as one of the best action thrillers ever made. However, its forgotten sequel is not viewed the same way today. 1998’s U.S. Marshals brought back Jones, now starring alongside Wesley Snipes, which was a box office and critical dud. So why was one movie so perfect and the other so not?
‘The Fugitive’ Is Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones’ Best Movie
In 1993, Harrison Ford was perhaps the most famous actor on the planet. He’d already played Han Solo in three Star Wars movies, and thrice had donned the fedora as Indiana Jones. Throw in other films like Blade Runner, Witness, Presumed Innocent, and Patriot Games, and Ford could seemingly do no wrong. That’s what made The Fugitive such a huge risk. It was based on the popular 1960s television series of the same name, an idea that was rare at the time. How do you reimagine a story that enthralled millions without coming across like a clone?
Just as risky was the role. Harrison Ford had made a career of either being the action hero chasing down bad guys with his gun, or the cocky smart ass with the funny one-liners who’s having a little too much fun during precarious situations. Often, he played both simultaneously. In The Fugitive, Ford had to hold back. Richard Kimble is a doctor who is sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit, the killing of his own wife. When he escapes, he has to find the real killer, but Kimble isn’t the calm and cool hero. He’s an everyman, a guy in over his head. In each scene, Ford portrays a nervous energy and terror. Richard Kimble is scared and anxious, but he can’t stop. He doesn’t have weapons or car chases to help him either. All he’s got going for him is his intelligence and a dedication to not giving up.
The Fugitive is a ticking clock movie. No one else but us knows that Kimble is innocent. We’re immediately put on his side, and it’s a tense countdown, because Kimble must prove his innocence before the authorities can catch up to him. What puts The Fugitive into all-time classic territory is that Ford’s talent is put next to another acting phenom in Tommy Lee Jones. The gripping script from Jeb Stuart and David Twohy is crucial, and Andrew Davis‘ direction is spot-on, but The Fugitive doesn’t work without the perfect counter to Kimble. It’s found in Sam Gerard, the Deputy U.S. Marshal tasked with bringing in Kimble. We don’t want him to succeed, of course, but this gruff man of the law becomes so likable because of his serious, by-the-book personality that we’re desperate for Gerard to believe Kimble and help save the day. How The Fugitive gets there is filmmaking magic.
Tommy Lee Jones and Wesley Snipes Couldn’t Recapture the Magic in ‘U.S. Marshals’
Next to the behemoth that was Jurassic Park, The Fugitive was the biggest movie of 1993, pulling in $177 million domestically. Critics loved it just as much as audiences. It has a stellar 96% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes (what’s wrong with 4% of you?!), and Roger Ebert gave it a perfect four stars. At the 1994 Academy Awards, The Fugitive was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, with Tommy Lee Jones taking home the lone win.
Five years later, The Fugitive got an unnecessary sequel. It was also an impossible one. There was no logical way to bring Harrison Ford back. Poor Richard Kimble surely couldn’t be falsely accused of a second murder! The only possible avenue was to follow Samuel Gerard on another case. That’s what U.S. Marshals did, now with a plot that sees Gerard and his returning team, which includes Joe Pantoliano, after another suspected murder. This time, it’s Wesley Snipes’ Mark Roberts who is on the run, with a bus and train collision escape upped to a crashed plane. Gerard is given a partner as well in Robert Downey Jr.‘s Special Agent John Royce. That doesn’t sound bad on paper, and although U.S. Marshals has plenty of action and a few big twists, it was dead on arrival. At the domestic box office, the sequel only took in $57 million. That’s not much of a surprise in a movie without Harrison Ford, but there was something bigger weighing it down.
U.S. Marshals flopped simply because it wasn’t very good. Snipes tries his best, and no offense to him, he’s simply not Ford. There was no way to step out of that enormous shadow. U.S. Marshals was also hurt by losing director Andrew Davis to Stuart Baird, who was making only his second feature. Everything that worked the first time wasn’t followed the second time around. It’s a lazy film that’s more basic action movie than smart thriller. You’ve seen this cookie-cutter type of genre film many times before, and outside of Jones giving his all, the thrill is gone. Critics turned their noses up at it, and today it has a paltry 31% Tomatometer score. Roger Ebert summed U.S. Marshals up succinctly, writing, “I hoped it would approach the taut tension of the 1993 film, and it doesn’t. It has extra scenes, needless characters, an aimless plot, and a solution that the hero seems to keep learning and then forgetting.” The characters of U.S. Marshals weren’t the only ones forgetting. Audiences forgot it, too. It’s not a horrible movie by any means, but when you’re following a classic, doing a standard, repetitive thriller isn’t going to cut it.
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