 | The superb 1960s television show got the full Hollywood treatment with this blockbuster action movie, one of the better such adaptations in recent years.
Note: the following contains plot spoilers.
Dr Richard Kimble (Ford) is a leading Chicago surgeon who finds himself falsely accused of the murder of his wife (played, in flashbacks, by Sela Ward). Convicted and sentenced to death, Kimble is given the chance to escape after the bus taking him and some fellow convicts to prison crashes during a messy escape attempt instigated by the other prisoners. Deputy US Marshall Samuel Gerard (Jones, in an Oscar-winning performance) is assigned to clear up the mess, and begins a manhunt to recapture Kimble and the other escapee, the genuinely nasty Copeland (to all appearances a rightful convict played by Eddie Bo Smith Jr). Kimble meanwhile sets out to prove his own innocence by locating the one armed man he encountered in his house before finding his dying wife.
There follows a succession of spectacular stunts and furious chases, as two men of genuine heroism and integrity (i.e. Kimble and Gerard) find themselves in a battle of wills and wits. One of the best facets of the movie is that Gerard (as well as Kimble) is portrayed sympathetically, holding a genuine belief that he is pursuing a murderer and acting accordingly. As if to emphasise this, Gerard also gets to bravely take down Copeland in a brief subplot early on in the movie.
The true reasons for the murder of Kimble's wife are far more elaborate than in the television show (in which, if memory serves, it amounted to a burglary gone wrong), and Gerard, confronted with evidence of Kimble's innocence, ends up chasing Kimble not to recapture him, but to try and save him.
|
