The Fugitive (1993) Review

"Our fugitive has been on the run for ninety minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground, barring injuries, is 4 miles per hour. That gives us a radius of six miles. What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles. Your fugitive's name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him."

The Fugitive wrings every last drop out of the 'Dr.' in Harrison Ford's Dr. Kimble. It craves to see him back in a hospital again and again, where his knowledge of layout, lingo, and procedure allows him to move through the massive buildings like a ghost, extracting exculpatory evidence and supplies in equal measure, even as the national and local police have the whole place staked out for him.

Tommy Lee Jones, the drawling hunter to Kimble's nimble rabbit, is always a half-step behind the whole film, but in a way that's tantalizing instead of laughable. The end of the film can't resuscitate action-movie tropes that must have been stale even in 1993, but the movie-long chase that leads up to it is one of the best on film.