THE FUGITIVE

THE FUGITIVE (Directed by Andrew Davis. Starring Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward, Joe Pantoliano, Andrew Katsulas, Jeroen Krabbe)

Much in the way British film-makers draw on their literary tradition (Shakespeare, Dickens, The Bronte sisters, E.M. Forster) for inspiration, or at least for bankable projects, American film-makers have increasingly been turning to their own cultural roots: sixties television. After the success of the Star Trek series, Batman and The Addams Family, films in the pipeline include The Beverly Hill Billies, Maverick, Bilko, The Man From UNCLE, Lost In Space and a live action Flintstones.

All through our childhoods, parents sternly warned of the bizarre medical side-effects brought on by watching too much TV, such as rotting brains and eyes that would somehow develop 45 degrees angles, yet here are these Hollywood producers, a species who never required much in the way of brains in the first place and who can afford the finest in cosmetic contact lenses to correct any peculiarities of vision, waving cheques for a hundred million dollars and crowing, "See, I always told ya television was good for me!"

It is a curious relationship. The small screen shrank down the values of the big screen, now the film industry is reinflating them. But in trying to present similar entertainment on low budgets, TV had to place character and concept over production. On the other hand, with its inflated budgets the film industry can sure make that TV series look poky but doesn't have the same time to work on character.

In 1963, in the original episode of The Fugitive, David Janssen's Dr. Richard Kimble (wrongly convicted of murdering his wife) escaped from a very unconvincing train crash, consisting mainly of flying styrofoam, shaking cameras and severe damage to the scalectrix models, to go on the run. Thirty years later, Harrison Ford's Kimble is put through a bone crushing bus and train crash that almost hurtles out of the screen. But Ford then has only two hours of screen time in which to evade the law, track down his wife's killers and confront the murderous one-armed man dogging his path. Janssen was on the run across our TV screen for four years. It's a somewhat different dynamic.

The Fugitive's television appeal was a kind of cod-existentialism really. Janssen was America's lonely man, wandering around with a hang dog expression, helping out people in need (most of them voluptuous women, curiously enough) before disappearing again with barely a chaste kiss to remember them by, haunted and hunted. The film has no time for such luxurious self-pity. Ford has a few minutes in which to establish his grief at the death of his wife before he has to hit the rod and get on with the adrenalin raising business at hand.

With significant plot and character changes (the policeman in pursuit is no longer personally vindictive, the one-armed man is more hired underling than bogeyman) and without even an appearance by the original star (long deceased) the relationship between the TV series and the film becomes purely conceptual. And when you consider that America's prime movie audience are in their later teens and early twenties and weren't even born when the series stopped broadcasting, I guess it hardly matters a whit. It may be considered a classic but it ain't Shakespeare. Nobody is going to complain about dialogue and detail changes. If anything upsets the mainstream audience, it is likely to be Ford's beard.

It's a great fuzzy beard, and it transform one of the most handsome men in America into an unrecognisable hairy splodge. Which is, of course, the very point. Bearded men don't make box-office blockbusters, but given the fact that everyone in the audience knows their hero will soon be on the run, we wait with baited breath for the crucial shaving scene. And we are not kept waiting long. Ten minutes into the film, with what appear to be half the American police force on his tail, Dr. Kimble pauses for a wash and shave. One cannot help but imagine his emotions as the hair falls from his face. Goddam, he must be thinking, I'm handsome! What the fuck did I ever grow that beard for? I look just like Harrison Ford! Despite this cunning disguise, however, he is immediately recognised by a policeman, enabling the chase to continue. What a relief.

Ford has starred in six of the most popular films of all time, the Star Wars saga and the Indiana Jones trilogy. In those he played characters with a lot of swagger, mixing the action adventure with a light comic touch. Most of the rest of his career has been suit and tie jobs, in which he plays a professional man called upon to look pained and sincere as his world folds around him. The Fugitive is one of his more successful attempts to combine the suit and tie genre with the running, jumping and hitting people genre but it still lacks the pzazz of Ford's comic timing. As a grief stricken man he endures most of his suffering in scowling silence, allowing Tommy Lee Jones' brusque delivery of a succession of snappy one liners to virtually steal the film from under his nose.

Ford's name on the marquee will drag people into the cinemas, but it is likely to be Jones they will remember. A superb actor whose pock-marked face and menacing presence has led to a screen life of playing villains, he is cast as a good guy here but it is hardly a role reversal. As the policeman on Ford's tail, he may be on the side of law and order but he's unlikely to have much audience sympathy. Yet he proves a match for Ford in the charisma stakes and gets all the good lines. If he didn't look like a walking corpse this could have been his ticket to superstardom.

The Fugitive is an efficient thriller, given a dark edge by Ford's performance and Andrew Davis' lean and mean direction. Davis has helmed decent action pics for less than stellar stars (including Chuck Norris' best film, Code Of Silence and Steven Seagal's recent hit Under Siege) but this is more reminiscent of his relentless, downbeat thriller The Package (which also starred Jones, opposite Gene Hackman). He strives for credibility in his action set-pieces, and conjures up Chicago's drizzle instead of the usual L.A. glow, but his leaning towards a kind of realism (let's not talk dirty realism here, the police don't even issue a picture of their wanted man until three-quarters of the way through the movie) somehow denies the film a little, much needed sparkle. The final confrontations, lacking the overblown values we have come to expect from movie thrillers, are a touch anti-climactic and wouldn't been out of place on a TV screen.

Which, I suppose, is where it is all going to end up some day anyway.