The Fugitive (1993)

The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993) 

"Name: Richard Kimble. Profession: Doctor of Medicine. Destination: Death Row, State Prison. Richard Kimble has been tried and convicted for the murder of his wife. But laws are made by men, carried out by men, and men are imperfect. Richard Kimble is innocent. Proved guilty, what Richard Kimble could not prove was that, moments before discovering his wife's body, he encountered a man running from the vicinity of his home. A man with one arm. A man who has not yet been found. Richard Kimble ponders his fate as he looks at the world for the last time and sees only darkness. But in that darkness, Fate moves its huge hand."

One of my favorite TV shows growing up (as it remains through adulthood) was the four season run (literally, actually) of "The Fugitive." What was it about? The opening narration (read by William Conrad) told you ever week.

"The Fugitive, a QM Production—starring David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble: an innocent victim of blind justice, falsely convicted for the murder of his wife ... reprieved by fate when a train wreck freed him en route to the death house ... freed him to hide in lonely desperation, to change his identity, to toil at many jobs ... freed him to search for a one-armed man he saw leave the scene of the crime ... freed him to run before the relentless pursuit of the police lieutenant obsessed with his capture."

"The Fugitive" depicted an American nightmare: An innocent man—a selfless saint, they would have you believe—is convicted for a crime he didn't commit and given the death penalty. An opportune accident enables him to escape and he spent the rest of the series trying to stay alive, living a lie under assumed names, buying himself time to find the uni-dexterous individual who did commit the crime, so he could clear his name and stop running. The show had a lot of angst, and benefited from its two leads, David Janssen's understated, sympathetic but wary fugitive and Barry Morse's police lieutenant who stood by his convictions—it didn't matter if Kimble was innocent or not, he was convicted.

When word of a movie-remake reached the press, I was skeptical. The series ran for four years, 120 hour-long episodes, and had a neat arc as Kimble drifted around the country, making at least 120 narrow escapes from the police, while his pursuit, the "One-Armed Man," made ever increasing appearances during its run. Trying to do "The Fugitive" in a mere 2-hour feature? Impossible. It would never work.

The good doctor and wife Helen in happier times.

But what 1993's feature did was what movies do at their best—it boiled the source material down, reducing it to the best parts and expanded on them. The Fugitive, efficiently directed by Andrew Davis (hitherto known for directing action movies starring Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal) took the sympathetic doctor (casting Harrison Ford, who was believable in action movies and as a vulnerable lead) and made his risks larger,* the time-frame much shorter the search area restricted to illinois (due to advanced police tracking techniques) and put a Davis-movie veteran who could be counted on for a touch of menace, Tommy Lee Jones, as Deputy Marshall Sam Gerard (I guess you can't picture Jones as a "Philip," as in the series).

The film begins with an evocative device it will use throughout the movie—an aerial shot of Chicago. Throughout the movie, random shots of terrain and city-scape will serve as transitions and entry points to scenes (the film had six editors!), giving the audience the central conceit and challenge for the characters—where do you find individuals in all of this?—providing both the access and difficulty in one simple moving image. Those overhead shots will occur again and again, showing us the haystack that will needle the characters— good guys, bad guys, and suspects alike—throughout the movie.

Having seen the obstacle first, the challenge begins: in high-contrast black and white, we see the murder of Helen Kimble (Sela Ward), the interrogation of her husband, Richard (Ford), who is a vascular surgeon at Chicago Memorial Hospital (a scene that was improvised by Ford and the two actors portraying Chicago police—one of them a former investigator), his conviction and sentencing to death, and transport to prison, where an escape attempt by other prisoners goes awry and puts their prison bus into the path of an oncoming train. It's a spectacular stunt, done with real vehicles (and shot by 23 cameras as it could only be staged once) and that shows Kimble, even in the course of a danger that is almost comically severe, still acting nobly even at the risk of his own life.

You'd be looking over your shoulder constantly, too, if you'd been chased by a runaway train.

The wreck and its repercussions brings out the local jurisdiction. And while they're at the point of calling off the investigation, in steps Deputy Marshall Sam Gerard and his gang of four: Cosmo Renfro (Joe Pantoliano), Biggs (Daniel Roebuck), Poole (L. Scott Caldwell), and the rookie Newman (Tom Wood). Gerard is the character the audience will least identify with. In the series, Morse's Gerard was relentless, pursuing Kimble all over the country, and with a singular purpose—capture him and put him back on death row, as he was convicted by a jury and as a law officer he's beholden to the law.

"The Big Dog" and his posse:
Daniel Roebuck, Jones, L. Scott Caldwell, Tom Wood, and Joe Pantoliano

Kimble we could identify with, as we knew he didn't kill his wife and our sympathies are with him, but Gerard was/is another matter. His pursuit of Kimble makes him an antagonist, and he isn't privy to what we know—that he is pursuing an innocent man whose capture will result in a wrongful death. What the movie Fugitive does is give Gerard some back-up, quite literally. As a Marshall, he does not investigate alone, but with a cadre of fellow officers who do the background tracking, giving him the clues to the chase and whereabouts of Kimble. It helps to soften the doggedness, too; he's so thorough, he pushes these agents to the max, leading to some wonderful interplay (most of which was improvised on location, bringing a fresh feel to the dialogue).

Kimble (in ambulance) heading for a blocked off tunnel; Gerard (in helicopter)
banking to meet him on the other side.

That includes this interchange between Kimble and Gerard at their first sighting of each other, inside the spill-way of a dam. In the scurry of the chase, Kimble is able to retrieve one of Gerard's weapons and gets the drop on him. In the exchange, Kimble shouts out the one thing he thinks matters most and Gerard makes a perfunctory reply (ad-libbed off-script by Jones).

Kimble: "I didn't kill my wife!"
Gerard: I don't care!"

He doesn't care. That's what it boils down to. And it disarms Kimble and raises the stakes of the chase. If he is going to clear himself of the charges, he has to do it himself, and given that he is standing on the edge of the spill-way of a dam and the only other choice is to walk back into custody, he makes the only choice there is. He goes the other way, because that is the only chance, slim as it is, that he has.

When "The Fugitive" first aired in the 1960's, it initially caught flack from some circles for having as its basis that the law enforcement/legal system was flawed (one of the executives for the network on which it aired groused that the show was "a slap in the face of American justice, week after week"). In the '90's, that sentiment didn't hold as much water, as there were reminders of withheld evidence, coerced or tainted testimony, courtroom politics and racial prejudices that incarcerated innocent people seemingly every week. Plus, in the post-Watergate era official corruption was beginning to be seen as the norm and not the exception. The movie version of The Fugitive falls right into that collective mind-set, setting it apart from the television version.

Also, what worked for television was randomness—the murder of Helen Kimble was a random act from a drifter who split the area soon after the crime—one of the reasons the culprit wasn't caught by the police and Kimble's story wasn't believed. To find the one-armed man, Kimble had to hit the road and it's a big country. But, the movie, with a 2 hour running time, has to be compact, have a through-line, and a conspiracy is that much more easy to follow—trace it backward, follow the money. Swim upstream and go to the headwaters to the source. Kimble doesn't travel around the country to find out the why, he goes back to Chicago where he is most in danger of being caught (and it seems that every scene is punctuated with sirens or a police presence). Indeed, there are two instances where the audience is led astray to think that Kimble is about to be burst in on by police.

While Kimble is hunting, Gerard is following Kimble, only one or two paces behind, following Kimble's investigation, and starting to see the purpose of what he's doing—something the television Gerard understood, but never truly believed. So, the movie starts to follow two parallel paths, and if Kimble's work leaves some unanswered questions, the Gerard sequences make it clear. It is a complicated story, far more than the simple one of the television series, but the movie never leaves the audience behind, and wraps up with a frenetic ending centered around the Chicago Hilton that seems to make use of every nook and cranny of the building.

Davis' direction isn't flashy—when he does a flashback, memory, or in one instance, a quick fantasy-warning, it's jarring and unsettling—but not out of place for the paranoid situation that Kimble find himself. And his platoon of editors make great work of overlapping dialog and sound effects to bridge, shorten, and keep the film moving at a break-neck pace. And James Newton Howard's minor-key, melancholy score never overshadows with melodrama, but supports the story, and more importantly, the pace, with subtlety and artistry.

The Fugitive is one of those rare films that actually honors its source rather than making a hash of it, and it's also one of those action movies (that are few and far between) that respects the audience's ability to be able to keep up and follow along a complicated plot, amidst the ten-minute intervals between set-pieces. 

"The Fugitive" is one of my favorite television shows. The Fugitive is one of my favorite movies.

"Richard..."

Among the cast of the movie are two extraordinarily talented actresses who
were about to get noticed in big ways for their acting abilities:
Julianne Moore (above) and Jane Lynch (below)

Mark Bennett's 1999 work "The Home of Richard Kimble" detailing the settings on the series.
Bennett does amazing blueprints of fictional homes of pop culture. A sample of his work is here.
I saw the original of this hanging at Microsoft Studios when it first opened.

Here's a detail showing the legend of it, detailing what constabulary
was featured and whether Lt. Gerard or the One-Armed Man also visited.

* The only incident from the series (besides the opening train-wreck) that the movie kept was Kimble going to a city lock-up after reading that a one-armed man was arrested there (from the Episode "Never Wave Goodbye, Part 1") and barely evading Gerard, who came to see the prisoner at the same time.  

The Grandmaster

Two Words.  Vertical.  Horizontal.
or
Once Upon a Time in Forshan

Let's get one thing out of the way first.  The version I saw of Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster (aka "Yi Dai Zong Shi" aka 一代宗師)  is the Weinstein Company release, which runs 108 minutes. The original Chinese version runs 130. That's about 20 minutes of footage missing. So, I don't know whether I'm reviewing Wong Kar-wai's latest film, or a long, long trailer for it.

Normally, I wouldn't be doing much kvetching about this, but I've seen enough of the man's movies to know that The Grandmaster is something very, very different from what he's done in the past (In the Mood for Love, Chungking Express, 2046): more formal, less dialog-driven, more image-conscious and more experimental (and Wong has pushed all sorts of boundaries already in his career).  Usually, when a distribution company does this much hatchet-work on a film (Ironically, this film is "presented by Martin Scorsese," who's also had a couple films filleted by the Weinstein's), the most interesting character-driven parts get left behind as "fat," leaving the parts with the most action.  

Well, in this case Wong might have already done that for us, for in telling the life-story of Ip Man—one that's been in the process for ten years—he's hit the highlights and the high fights and other than some discussions of philosophy and technique, that's it. It's simultaneously illuminating and frustrating: frustrating because the movie plays like a bio along the lines of DeVito's (and Mamet's) Hoffa or Mann's Ali, all life-highlights and nothing to connect the dots; illuminating because it appears to be a dramatic choice, making Ip Man's life segmented between life and work and philosophy and not much else—there is no historical context other than the scripted titles telling you what is going on in the rest of the world.*

It begins with a fight in the rain between Ip (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and several combatants, staged as a brutal ballet in various speeds, escalates through the number and various tactics of the opponents, and ends with the defeat of the strongest combatant. Ip then flashes back on his life starting with his marriage to Cheung Wing-sing (the incredibly beautiful Hye-Kyo Song), and the news that the master of Northern China, Gong Yutian (Wang Quixiang) has retired and bequeaths the role of master to Ma San (Jin Zhang), with the caveat that the South should have their own master. It is decided that Ip should challenge Gong for the right, and he is put to the test by three Southern masters before the match with Gong.  

That match is anything but typical, has nothing to do with the training of the Southern masters, and Gong declares Ip his heir in Southern China. That does not sit well with Gong's daughter Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang), who challenges Ip for the sake of family honor. Their meeting and subsequent fight is an amusing affair of restraint and dexterity, and the fight concludes to Gong's satisfaction. Ip can only smile and say "I want a rematch."

Gong Er's moment of triumph.  You can see it in her face.

Now, despite this country-wide grudge match, and the Sino-Japanese War, which plunges the country into a depression and, as a result, sends Ip to Hong Kong to provide for his family, the film could not be more personal, keeping its eye on Ip, while, in the meantime, Gong, who has been only secretly trained in kung fu by her father, seeks revenge against Ma San, in a totally focused, life-sacrificing mission to the death. The two are poles apart in purpose and drive and yet they are drawn together, players on opposite sides. The film is a series of fights, the important ones, punctuated by a series of beautifully photographed scenes of domesticity and meditation, broken up into chapters of title cards, as from the silent film days.

Wong's approach to this is very formal, the photography sumptuously lit, golden light betraying dark spaces and staged sometimes as formal portraits of a time and place, emotions run high, but not betrayed by the faces of the principals, the most expressive being Ip Man's wife, who disappears from the film very early on. I'd be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful film to see this year, even if the beauty comes with a certain static quality that pushes the audience away, albeit gently. And the fights are balletic brawls, filmed with depth and in tight close-ups, but at a pace that allows for position and space to be registered without sacrificing speed. In fact, it's quite invigorating to see a slow-motion concentration edited quickly as the fights are done here, as it is during the first fight in the rain. But, befitting the styles and other situations—the Gong Er/Ma San fight has its own bizarre energy-force—Wong gives each confrontation a different presentation that makes each one different, and mesmerizing.

There is one odd, touching thing that brings up the ghosts of the past just as the title cards harken back to the silents, Wong brings to bear Sergio Leone as a touchstone by making sure that he gives Gong Er a borrowed theme from Once Upon a Time in America to communicate the regret she cannot express herself. It produces goose-bumps, and not just from recognizing the source of the haunting cue, but for being so solidly apt and instantly evocative (composer Ennio Morricone can do that). It's a beautiful, odd, off-kilter film. I only wish to see more of it.

Portrait of the Artist as a Portrait-Artist:
Wong Kar Wai book-ends chapters in Ip Man's story with staged sittings

* There have been three other films, heavily fictionalized, on the same subject in the time that Wong was working on this film, as well as a couple television films about him.

Don't Make a Scene: All About Eve

The Story: If Sunset Boulevard is the cinema's homage to itself, All About Eve is its homage to theater. Both share the common theme of illusion and reality confused with art and artifice—of players being played. Sunset Boulevard shows an incident that indicts the industry. All About Eve does the same, but implies it's all in the game.

Both films are love letters to their arts, but sealed with arsenic on the flap. Both are films by writer/directors about their mouth-pieces—actors—and all too eager to demonstrate how close the acting profession enters from stage left arm in arm with pathology.

It's interesting the deletion here from the original script to what made it on-screen. Birdie's interjection with the "It was so cold..." joke was taken out, maybe because the mention of a bra would cause an un-hooking hissy-fit with the blue noses at The Breen Office. Maybe, when it came time to edit to a theater-friendly length of two hours, it was dispensed with as unnecessary—it distracts from Eve's story at this point. The scene already has ample evidence that Birdie (bless her!)* can be an irritant. She is, after all, the smartest one in a roomful of sophisticates.

But it was probably cut out as a little too much fore-shadowing. Eve has center-stage and Birdie interrupts her, taking the spotlight—like any good vaudevillian—and Eve "looks at her unsmilingly" it says in the description. Not a big deal on the page—it indicates a lack of reaction. On film, it would have sent off alarms in the audience, especially given the performance of Anne Baxter, never the subtlest of actresses—very theatrical—for whom this part is a career high-point. She's splendid and smart in it.

As is Davis—this is also a career high-point in a storied career full of them. Interesting to note that Davis was not the first choice for the role. Claudette Colbert was. But when Colbert was unavailable, Davis grabbed onto the part with both hands and ran it across for a touchdown. It's a brave role for an actress, too, played even more bravely by Davis, who wasn't afraid to make herself seem unattractive as long as she could remain fascinating—she plays this whole scene with cold cream on her face. And the character of Margo Channing—theater diva approaching middle age, trying to grab onto youth with a younger man, and fending off attacks across her prow by a younger, ambitious actress—is full of smart talk, foolish actions, and scenes that would be easier to play on a roller-coaster. Davis grabbed onto it, dug her fingernails in, and made herself indelible in Margo's image. When Davis was feted with the Post Office's honorial stamp, they based it on a publicity shot from All About Eve, although with Margo's perpetual cigarette discreetly left out for the sake of the one thing Margo might not abide—political correctness.

The Set-Up: It is another triumphant night on-stage for Margo Channing (Bette Davis). Backstage is another story. Tonight she meets "her Number One fan"—in the Stephen King sense—the girl who's been hanging outside the stage-door for every performance..."the mousey one with the trench-coat and the funny hat." Tonight, her best friend Karen Richards (Celeste Holm), who has yet to learn that the path to Hell is paved with good intentions, will take pity on the poor girl and bring her into the fold: Enter Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter).

There is no Exit.

Action!

Script deletions are in Red

They all laugh.
Karen goes to the door, opens it. Eve comes in. Karen closes the door behind her. A moment.
EVE (simply): I thought you'd forgotten about me.
KAREN: Not at all.
(her arm through Eve's)KAREN: Margo, this is Eve Harrington.
Margo changes swiftly into a first-lady-of-the-theater manner.
MARGO (musically): How do you do, my dear.
BIRDIE (mutters): Oh, brother.
EVE: Hello, Miss Channing.
KAREN: My husband...
LLOYD (nicely): Hello, Miss Harrington.
EVE: How do you do, Mr. Richards.
MARGO (graciously): And this is my good friend and companion, Miss Birdie Coonan.
BIRDIE: Oh, brother.
MARGO: Miss Coonan...
LLOYD (to Birdie): Oh brother what?
BIRDIE: When she gets like this... all of a sudden she's playin' Hamlet's mother...
MARGO (quiet menace): I'm sure you must have things to do in the bathroom, Birdie dear.
BIRDIE: If I haven't, I'll find something till you're normal.
She goes into the bathroom.
MARGO: Dear Birdie. Won't you sit down, Miss Worthington?
KAREN: Harrington.
MARGO: I'm so sorry... Harrington. Won't you sit down?
EVE: Thank you.
She sits. A short lull.
MARGO: Would you like a drink? It's right beside you...
KAREN: I was telling Margo and Lloyd about how often you'd seen the play...
They start together, and stop in deference to each other. They're a little flustered. But not Eve.
EVE (to Margo): No, thank you.
(to Lloyd) Yes. I've seen every performance.
LLOYD (delighted): Every performance? Then - am I safe in assuming you like it?
EVE: I'd like anything Miss Channing played...
MARGO (beams): Would you, really? How sweet-
LLOYD (flatly): I doubt very much that you'd like her in 'The Hairy Ape'.
EVE: Please, don't misunderstand me, Mr. Richards.
EVE: I think that part of Miss Channing's greatness lies in her ability to choose the best plays...your new play is for Miss Channing, isn't it, Mr. Richards?
MARGO: Of course it is.
LLOYD: How'd you hear about it?
EVE: There was an item in the Times. i like the title. 'Footsteps on the Ceiling'.
LLOYD: Let's get back to this one. Have you really seen every performance?
(Eve nods)
LLOYD: Why? I'm curious...
Eve looks at Margo, then drops her eyes.
EVE" Well. If I didn't come to see the play, I wouldn't have anywhere else to go.
MARGO: There are other plays...
EVE: Not with you in them. Not by Mr. Richards...
LLOYD: But you must have friends, a family, a home-
Eve pauses. Then shakes her head.
KAREN: Tell us about it - Eve...
Eve looks at her - grateful because Karen called her "Eve."
Then away, again...
EVE: If I only knew how...
KAREN: Try...
EVE: Well...
Birdie comes out of the bathroom.
Everybody looks at her sharply. She realizes she's in on something important.
She closes the door quietly, leans against it.
EVE: Well... it started with the play before this one...
LLOYD: 'Remembrance'.
MARGO: Did you see it here in New York?
EVE: San Francisco. It was the last week. I went one night...
EVE: ...the most important night in my life - until this one.
EVE: Anyway... I found myself going the next night - and the next and the next.
EVE: Every performance. Then, when the show went East - I went East.
BIRDIE: I'll never forget that blizzard the night we played Cheyenne. A cold night. First time I ever saw a brassiere break like a piece of matzos...
Eve looks at her unsmilingly, then back to her hands.
KAREN: Eve... why don't you start at the beginning?
EVE: It couldn't possibly interest you.
MARGO: Please...
Eve speaks simply and without self-pity.
EVE: I guess it started back home. Wisconsin, that is. There was just mum, and dad - and me. I was the only child, and I made believe a lot when I was a kid - I acted out all sorts of things... what they were isn't important.
EVE: But somehow acting and make-believe began to fill up my life more and more,
EVE: ...it got so that I couldn't tell the real from the unreal except that the unreal seemed more real to me...
EVE: I'm talking a lot of gibberish, aren't I?
LLOYD: Not at all...
EVE: Farmers were poor in those days, that's what dad was - a farmer. I had to help out. So I quit school and I went to Milwaukee. I became a secretary. In a brewery. (she smiles)
When you're a secretary in a brewery - it's pretty hard to make
believe you're anything else. Everything is beer.
EVE: It wasn't much fun, but it helped at home -
EVE: - and there was a Little Theater Group... like a drop of rain in the desert. That's where I met Eddie. He was a radio technician. We played 'Liliom' for three performances, I was awful -
EVE: ...then the war came, and we got married. Eddie was in the air force - and they sent him to the South Pacific.
EVE: You were with the O.W.I., weren't you Mr. Richards?
(Lloyd nods)
EVE: That's what 'Who's Who' says... well, with Eddie gone, my life went back to beer.
EVE: Except for a letter a week. One week Eddie wrote he had a leave coming up. I'd saved my money and vacation time.
EVE: I went to San Francisco to meet him.
(a slight pause)
EVE: Eddie wasn't there. They forwarded the telegram from Milwaukee - the one that came from Washington to say that Eddie wasn't coming at all. That Eddie was dead...
(Karen puts her hand on Lloyd's)
EVE: ... so I figured I'd stay in San Francisco. i was alone, but couldn't go back without Eddie. I found a job. And his insurance helped...
EVE: ...and there were theaters in San Francisco.
EVE: And one night Margo Channing came to play in 'Remembrance'... and I went to see it.
EVE: And - well - here I am...
She finishes dry-eyes and self-composed. Margo squeezes the bridge of her nose, dabs at her eyes.
BIRDIE (finally): What a story. Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end...
That breaks the spell. Margo turns to her-
MARGO: There are some human experiences, Birdie, that do not take place in a vaudeville house - and that even a fifth-rate vaudevillian should understand and respect!
MARGO (to Eve): I want to apologize for Birdie's-
BIRDIE (snaps in): You don't have to apologize for me!
BIRDIE (to Eve): I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. It's just my way of talkin'...
EVE (nicely): You didn't hurt my feelings, Miss Coonan...
BIRDIE: Call me Birdie.
BIRDIE (to Margo): As for bein' fifth-rate -
BIRDIE: i closed the first half for eleven years an' you know it!
She slams into the bathroom again. At that precise instant BILL SAMPSON flings open the door to the dressing room. He's youngish, vital, undisciplined. He lugs a beat-up suitcase which he drops as he crosses to Margo-

All About Eve

Words by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Pictures by Milton R. Krasner and Joseph L. Mankiewicz

All About Eve is available on DVD from Fox Home Entertainment.

* Thelma Ritter's line about the dogs snapping at her rear-end is one of my favorites—the very reason why I wanted to use this scene, and I've neglected mentioning anything of Ritter, one of the best character actresses Hollywood has had. But she'll turn up again, in a similarly straight-talking role for Alfred Hitchcock.