Hollywood Doesn’t Make Movies Like <em>The Fugitive</em> Anymore
This movie was not supposed to be good. Here’s the plot: A middle-aged cardiovascular surgeon’s wife is killed by a one-armed man, and said surgeon is sent to death row. But his bus crashes on the way to prison, then a train crashes into the bus crash, then Dr. Richard Kimble escapes to go on the run with five U.S. marshals on his heels. This is literally the opening 20 minutes of The Fugitive.
Not even the actors themselves were convinced was going to be good. Harrison Ford thought it would be his , Bruce Willis’s $51 million flop from 1991. Tommy Lee Jones, who plays the lead marshal, thought marked the end of his career. But then this action thriller, the one that was written off as quickly by its stars as its hero is by the law, became the third-highest-grossing film of 1993. And then it was nominated for seven (seven!) Oscars—including Best Picture. And then it actually won one of those Oscars (well, Jones did). Perhaps even more surprising is that this piece of
