Hacker Cinema
The Fugitive
1993 · Film · 131 min
Part of Marshal Samuel Gerard Collection
Directed by Andrew Davis
Wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to death, Richard Kimble escapes from the law in an attempt to find the real killer and clear his name.
13 positive2 negative14 neutralfrom 29 commenters
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33 comments on Hacker News
This movie was great. If you liked thoughtful almost-action movies No Country for Old Men or even something like The Fugitive, you’ll enjoy this. There are cinematic set pieces as beautiful as anything I’ve seen in years (the rooftop sequence!) the acting is stellar throughout, and the finale gives an original take on one of the most common film plot devices of all time.
The film’s politics are very progressive/liberal so I can imagine that deterring some viewers but PTA adds a lot of nuance and subversion throughout that make it more of an examination of radicalism than a straight trumpeting of it. As mentioned in another comment the radical characters often disagree and are shown taking very different strategies that then produce very different outcomes.
The Fugitive was a good movie but I think the Transformers and Fast and Furious series are trash. I really liked Wolf Warrior 2 on the other hand and I'd add that that movies is not about nurturing resentments or seeking conflict with the west in the slightest unlike some Chinese movements that have come out since them. I only wish Ne Zha had not been packed with fart jokes but that's what you get when you are cribbing from Dreamworks movies.
So, I mean, I know that not everyone loves The Lord of the Rings movies. But I just need everyone to remember that Peter Jackson did them. And I mean, I thought Heavenly Creatures was really interesting, and I think I'm one of the dozens of people who really liked The Frighteners (yes, I'm a hipster Frighteners fan.) But if you'd asked me, "Viking, should we trust Peter Jackson to make 11 hours and 21 minutes of The Lord of the Rings (extended editions)?" I would have said, "No," and I would have, in my humble opinion, been totally completely wrong.
I mean, I just need to remind people that great movies exist. LA Confidential. The Matrix. Hell, even the Fugitive is a lot of fun (for what it is.) Mr. Robot is simultaneously amazing and also boring as shit for huge stretches - but man, they committed to that vision, and when the big moments hit, they hit hard. True Lies. True Romance. The Abyss. The Fisher King. Good Will Hunting. Inglourious Basterds. Hell, even Hackers. And Sneakers.
I think Daemon and Freedom could be done wonderfully.
Just imagine ending the series with a nice cackle...
"I do so enjoy my vork..."
1992 Basic Instinct https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103772/
1993 The Fugitive https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106977/
1993 The X-Files https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106179/
1999 Sopranos (series) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141842/
2004 Lost (series) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411008
2004 Desperate Housewives (series) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0410975/
> “Does this guy ever quit?” one of the marshals asks toward the end of The Fugitive, and the answer is no—both for Dr. Richard Kimble and for Davis. For two hours and 10 minutes, this film does not relent. Not even for a cup of coffee (that scene was cut), not even for some shopping (cut), not even for romance (also cut). There is no hanging out here. Everything rushes. If it isn’t the actors, then it’s the camera with a Where’s Waldo? view of Chicago, the hometown of both Kimble and Davis; if it isn’t the camera, then it’s the swelling orchestral music.
This description of brutal cuts to a film in order to keep it tight and cohesive reminds me of one of the themes from Pompo: The Cinéphile, where the director struggles with cutting out massive swaths of footage from his film to keep it under 90 minutes. Or is this how all films are made?
The Fugitive was a remake of a 60s TV show, had a 1998 sequel, a 2000 TV series and another 2020 series. It wasn't exactly standalone.
“Does this guy ever quit?”. In relation to the speed of the film, and the way the story is presented with an ever increasing suspense/action, The Fugitive reminds me of Billy Friedkin's films, The French Contact and The Exorcist (and maybe To Live and Die in L.A.), they are films that simply do not let you breathe, and you leave the theater with the certainty that you have just lived a unique experience.
I thought we are talking movies like Fugitive which are realistic, possible to happen with regular character and not some superhero or scifi.
I have no problem to defend Drive against Fugitive, Fugitive aged really bad and it feels like cheap TV movie, Drive is obviously much newer, has great cinematography, great score, atmosphere, nice action and aged really good despite being 11 years already (but I am not really some big fan of Drive, just saying it's better than Fugitive). Btw. just because something is "stupid action flick" it doesn't mean it can't be good at it, you can have good stupid action flicks and you can have bad stupid action flicks. I don't usually watch stupid action flicks (I'm more (social) drama guy), but when I do I want to watch the good ones.
I'm recently rewatching movies starting from 90s and while The Rock was still enjoyable even in 2022 (8mm or Absolute power were meh, same as already back then), I remember Fugitive being pretty bad already many years ago. Movies like Die Hard, Speed, Con Air, Mission impossible, Enemy of the state, were all better than Harrison action movies, which always felt like cheap TV movies with low production value. Meanwhile we have 2 year newer Heat, which is still for sure in top 5 best action/crime movies ever and aged amazingly and could easily beat any day any new action/crime movie. The production value and director skills are on completely different level than Harrison action movies. I just checked the most famous Harrison action movies I remember from 90s - Fugitive, Clear and Present danger, The Devil's Own and Air Force one - all 4 have different director, 3 directors nobody remembers and 4th only thanks to Das Boot.
That description makes me think of Grand Torino. Another excellent film, and unlike the Fugitive it's original.
It's important to note that "The Fugitive" was a remake of a 60s TV show by the same name (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fugitive_(1963_TV_series)), which is only briefly mentioned in the article. That's probably the origin of the down-to-earth storyline and also the relatively corny stuff like the one armed man. I wonder if the script would have had a chance even in the nineties if it would have been an original script rather than a remake of a relatively successful (4 seasons, 120 episodes) TV series.
Heat wasn't a very good movie. It was full of clichés, esp. the female characters. The cop's wife cheats on him with a loser, to make her husband notice. The wife of a gangster is obsessed with kids and family. And of course the love interest of the protagonist doesn't have a clue about what he does or whohe is, she's an innocent white dove completely, well, clueless. Morals are also very loose, which makes the protagonists hard to relate to.
The Fugitive has very bad guys, which may be a little cliché too, but there is this ambiguous central character of the Marshal who has a great arc. At the beginning he's just doing his job and isn't interested in the least in the details of the case. He only digs into them because he thinks they may help with the chase. And as the movie progresses he warms up to the protagonist, until he saves him at the end. That's great.
One way to entirely ruin the movie would have been to insert scenes with the Marshal's wife where she would ask why he's never home, and scold him for missing his son's football game, etc.
Do we need more movies like The Fugitive? We have plenty of action/drama films at this point. Why make new ones?
One big thing people don't talk about enough is the curation/marketing pipeline we used to have with movies.
You'd see some glimpses of a new project via live televisionm which was the only way to stay connected to everyone.
Then you'd maybe watch it in the theater.
and here's the important part, there was a 9+ month delay from a release in a theater to being able to watch it free of charge on television. So you'd go to blockbuster and you'd open the door and look above the employees.
And there'd be a marquee with all the new movie titles you'd probably recognize from the movie theater advertising onslaught you watched.
Now there is no live television. everyone pays for streamers so we don't watch movie commercials anymore.
And I don't go to blockbuster and there's no list of new releases.
Now a huge star will be in a film that no ones ever heard of, that used to never happen.
When I was younger, I practically couldn't avoid knowing what movies were coming.
Now I have no idea.
But I have been hearing about Top Gun and Elvis. So that's a good start.
But after all that, I have to say the Fugitive is one of my favorite movies.
Tommy Lee Jones is the VIP of the film.
Unpopular opinion: The Fugitive is not a particularly good movie and Harrison Ford is not a particularly good actor.
I mean if one wants to write an article about the good action movies of the time maybe write about Heat?
And while I agree with the observation that we are seeing way too many entirely predictable movies made by the same patterns, I would argue The Fugitive was one of them at the time.
Still from time to time something very different comes along. I just watched "Everything, everywhere, all at Once". That is definitely not your typical Holywood fare, and was extremely surprising and enjoyable.
I wouldn't really call U.S. Marshals a sequel, per se. It's more a film that takes place in the same universe as The Fugitive and features many of the same characters.
check The next three days with Crowe, very similar premise to Fugitive, remake if French movie if you prefer original
what about Prisoners, In the bedroom, The guilty (2018), Good time, Oldboy (original, not from Hollywood though), Collateral, End of watch, Training day, Drive, etc. - all these were released after and they are better movies (most of them more thrillers than action though, but some straight up action), I can't really recommend exactly same alternative since I don't watch stupid action flicks like Fugitive, now that I have much more options than in 90s
Movies in the past were made for mass audiences. But they existed in a world before social media, cell phones, podcasts, streaming tv and all the other entertainment we have now.
People who enjoyed movies such as The Fugitive do not go to cinemas anymore as much. Cinema going audiences shrunk severly. The only reliable market is kids movies, superhero movies and established franchises.
What I love about the Fugitive is how slow the pace is and how relative down to earth the subject matter is. I find it difficult to watch action movies these days, with camera cuts every second and thirty seconds per scene. I’ve taken to watching Korean and Scandinavian shows on Netflix which I find far better paced.
Thing you haven't mentioned is that with no oversight, no transparency no counter, no clear your name, the tyranny which wants to ruin your life doesn't need to build a CSAM scanner to do it. A tip-off to the police, a falsified claim from an "eye witness", an "accident" putting your name on the wrong report to get the machinery rolling and it will, as you say, roll by itself. See what actually did happen to Sir Cliff Richard[1] where "a complaint to the police" got his house raided and his name dragged through the media and despite not being arrested, not being charged, case being dropped, him suing the media and winning, suing the police and winning and the media apologising, he says his reputation will never be completely cleared - and it probably never will be, and it didn't require any specific tech.
"The System" didn't need to wait patiently for a big tech company to build a complicated system with dastardly moustache-twirling weaknesses before it could affect Sir Cliff, anymore than Big Brother in 1984 needed to wait for Winston to be seen taking action on the telescreen in his house before the system crushed him. If "The System" wanted to accuse you, it could accuse your car of having been seen on a nearby road at the time, your likeness being seen on CCTV, and if you get rid of licence plate recognition scanners and CCTV then it would be "an anonymous witness" seeing you in the area at the time or "overhearing you discussing" something.
> "Most people don't understand how life destroying a false accusation is"
Citation needed? Because we were forced to read 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird in school and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people were as well; we've seen cult TV series like The Prisoner and The Fugitive focusing on the lives of the trapped trying to escape "the system". Blockbuster films have been made about the power of "The State" chasing people such as Enemy of the State with Will Smith. Films in the pattern "wrongly accused must fight to clear his name" and "stalwart good guy fights the system gone bad" are practically genres on their own - The Fugitive as a film with Harrison Ford, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Shawshank Redemption, and specifically about someone falseley accused by a child, The Hunt with Mads Mikkelsen which is in the IMDB Top 250 films.
Are you also, for example, complaining about the system where doctors and social workers are mandatory reporters if they have any evidence or suspicion of children being abused? That's a "their word against yours" system which pervades the nation, has no oversight, has no objective criteria, no explanaiton of the workings of the brain behind it, relies on humans when we know for certain that there are doctors who make mistakes and errors of judgement and at least some who would look the other way for money.
At least with the tech company CSAM scanners we can potentially have a society wide discussion about how they work in detail, whether that's reasonable, who could and should oversee them and how, what kinds of data cloud companies are obliged to know about their customers and what is reasonable for them to not know, etc. But even in tech circles we can't actually have those discussions, most of the attempts to discuss the details of how it works are drowned out by people who haven't a clue what Apple announced, misunderstand massive parts of it, conflate two or three different systems, don't seem to understand that other tech companies already do this with much less careful design, and cry tyranny and blame China.
Hypothetically, iMessage or any chat system could be built end to end encrypted, any cloud file sync or file storage could be. One end of the spectrum is that they should be. If that's your position then "the system" will probably work around you, that's the "opt out of modern life" position of the "return to the woods" lifestyle. You can't unmake billions of cheap ubiquitous cameras, you can't unopen Pandora's box, and you probably can't stop people emotionally reacting strongly to topics of child protection. If your reaction to that is "not listening, no no no" then it doesn't seem likely to sway "the system" very much at all.
> "CSAM is a dastardly and effective way to establish a totalitarian rule by fear of life in jail, nothing more.
America has effectively incarcerated a lot of people into for-profit prisons without needing this. China has effectively added a lot of population control by rule of fear without needing this. You don't need a high-tech murder-detector to make people fear being thrown in jail for murder.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Richard#Property_search,_investigation_and_BBC_litigation
> It actually looks like the Blu-Ray DVD of The Fugitive is $10. Though in general, older content (whether e-book, streaming movies, or purchased music) never seems to be as much cheaper as you'd think it "should" be. I imagine most of the rights holders don't want to get into a race to the bottom for non-blockbuster content so they tend to stay around industry price norms for newer material.
Right, the copyright holders effectively get to dictate the price and prevent redistribution (how does someone resell their digital [non-physical] copy to me without running afoul of DMCA and the like?). It's not a normal market, and the MPAA and similar organizations have lobbied to dictate the market rules to funnel as much money as possible to them.
For example, copyright terms these days are absurdly long--70 years beyond the lifetime of the original author.
It actually looks like the Blu-Ray DVD of The Fugitive is $10. Though in general, older content (whether e-book, streaming movies, or purchased music) never seems to be as much cheaper as you'd think it "should" be. I imagine most of the rights holders don't want to get into a race to the bottom for non-blockbuster content so they tend to stay around industry price norms for newer material.
But we don't know, how the situation would unfold, if he was at school after the incident, do we?
I hope, this kid will like science after this whole thing is over still. It really seems, he was wrongly accused (as in the movie The Fugitive with Harrison Ford) and it is nice the family is trying to give him support.
In general, today's kids might work on their projects while at home. I have a colleague, who was sick at home for a long time and he basically learned to program the computer during that time. He has written a game, learned recursion and other concepts on his own and much more. He almost certainly wouldn't have learned the same at school. He programs professionally now, has a PhD. in math and worked at Google. It really depends on the family, the child and the school of course (in case of absence for whatever reason, this has less influence).
For sorta-realistic Chicago accents, watch and enjoy the movie "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford. For big ol' jokey Chicago accent, the "Superfans" SNL sketches.
I thought that Get Out and Us had at least some Hollywood funding, looks like I was wrong. For example “Cape Fear” and “The Fugitive” made in the early ‘90s were pure Hollywood movies that were interesting for grown-ups, too, I fail to see something like that filmed nowadays (both of them were remakes, too, proof that you can film a remake and still produce an interesting movie after all). I also miss smart action-oriented/thriller movies like “Enemy of the State”.
Big pharma has been mistrusted for decades now. Think of the 1993 movie The Fugitive.
Banks and other lenders has been mistrusted since biblical times.
You've seen it and know you enjoy it. Surely you experienced the twists of The Fugitive unspoiled by the media. Additionally, I don't think anyone could have pictured Harrison Ford as the actual killer in the movie. And you always have to suspect the overly slick friend/business partner.
I'll admit, for a while, I spent a lot of time on themoviespoiler, a website dedicated to, well, movie spoilers. Like you, I sometimes can't take an emotionally exhausting ride. I like to watch movies for a little escapism, not to come out of the other side drained.
When a story is well done, I can immerse myself in it and see it from a character's point of view. So I can still enjoy a movie with a big reveal at the end even if I already know the reveal.
On the other hand, some movies are simply too intense to be enjoyable for me. So I often pull up Wikipedia first to make sure that the payoff is going to be worth it.
An example that falls into both categories is "The Fugitive" (Harrison Ford movie based on the TV show). I already know who the villain is and who dies at the end, but I can still enjoy Harrison Ford piecing it together and Tommy Lee Jones trying to stop him. And the last part of the movie is more intense and action-heavy than I really like, but I can take it because I know how it turns out.
I sometimes joke that I'm a member of the "Wikipedia Film Club" because I read about more movies than I actually end up watching.
He was charged in Sweden which issued a European Arrest warrant which he attempted to appeal unsuccessfully in the UK up to and including the supreme court.
He was released on bail within the UK and had to surrender his passport until the time in which the matter would be settled.
Assange was notified of the European arrest warrant by the UK authorities in late 2010, the whole case dragged out for another 2 years before he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy.
The fact of the matter that Assange lost 2 full appeal processes which resulted in the Swedish Supreme court upholding the arrest warrant, and the UK supreme court upholding the extradition under a lawful European arrest warrants. These are 2 European western democracies with a functional legal system which unlike what some people might think here isn't exactly the PR department or a henchman of the US government.
Assange has refused to surrender under a lawful arrest warrant and violated the conditions of his bail these are 2 offenses which will on their own will land you in prison regardless of any other charges. A normal person can't say well fuck it I don't think you should arrest me so screw you after losing an appeal in front of the supreme court, a normal person can't say well fuck it I don't think you should extradite me and I'll just skip bail if you don't mind after losing another appeal process in front of the supreme court.
It doesn't matter what you think about this case, what you think about Assange or WikiLeaks the matter of fact here is that Assange believes he is above the law, and he acted upon his belief by violating laws and seeking refuge in a foreign country without an extradition treaty.
Normal people aren't afforded these luxuries, and if it was some banker or politician who acted in the same manner everyone would been up in arms shouting to get them out of that embassy by force if necessary. And the claims that the Swedish authorities refusing to depose him in that embassy are some how a sign that the case was manufactured are also insane, the authorities should not humor people who piss on the law, it's not up to some one to decide where they will be deposed especially not after they've broken the law again and are now in a position to say what they want without being touchable.
Say Sweden can depose him, try him in absentia and find him guilty what good would it do? he's still tucked away in a place when they can't touch him, and if they do the same and acquit him it it will show that if you have enough money, power or political capital you can do what ever the fuck you want (which is sadly true probably far too many places) and get preferential treatment just because you are a special snowflake.
At this point even if he goes back to Sweden, tried, and acquitted he should face jail he has spat on the entire legal process in 2 fairly respected western democracies and made a mockery of their legal system, the crimes he committed by hiding in the embassy have nothing to do with the crimes he allegedly committed to prior to that, they didn't lead to this situation, his own actions did.
This isn't a Hollywood movie ala the "Fugitive", you can't just decide that the law doesn't apply to you and run away even if it is to prove your so called innocence while committing other crimes in the process, if you think it's fine then we might as well go back to the wild west with a high noon court or even further in time with trial by combat.
Film, please, only because I think the plot would fit better in a movie. It's like "The Fugitive" - the concept worked better as a movie than a TV show.
I hate more recent action movies (e.g. Bond movies) for that reason. I can't figure out what's going on. I miss the more sedate pace of 1980's and 1990's action movies. Go back and watch Die Hard or the Fugitive sometime.
Agreed - that is an awesome experience - its happened a few times to me - Cape Fear, Training Day & The Fugitive - all great movies.