Lam: The Fugitive

The Flee

                The Fugitive is an interesting 1990's chase crime film featuring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones as the main protagonist and antagonist. Contrary to Ford's other films, Ford's character Richard Kimble is put high on a pedastal and kicked down continuously. The normally heroic Ford takes quite the opposite turn in portraying a desperate man who was stripped of everything, including money, love, and freedom. As Pfeiffer also iterates, invoking feelings of sympathy and empathy in the audience was key to this drama film (Pfeiffer 212).

                One of the most important scenes of this carnage is actually the post-carnage event of Kimble (Harrison Ford) running away afterwards. Why would he even run away in the first place? Many may cite fear as the biggest factor and pushing force, but yes, while acknowledging that there is fear inherent in this action, he mostly wanted to escape a bad situation in order to regroup and prove his innocence. As other characters in the film said, everyone acknowledged the fact that Richard Kimble was too smart. If one were to follow his thought process, he transformed from being a vasculocardiac surgeon to being a private detective. However, it was extremely interesting to see him display his medical knowledge, and the fact that this was the profession given to his character helped the audience understand his humanity and thus his innocence. Many people look upon doctors and physicians with scorn and envy, but often, these people never stop to think about the difficulty that these physicians went through in order to get to where they are that warrants such a high salary. However, by taking this away from his character, Kimble was forced to start over, and the train wreck deux ex machina was the catalyst for this reset.

                I would like to focus on the flee of Kimble that occurs before the chase begins. Again, I would like to pose the question of why Kimble would even run in the first place. If he were to stay and wait for help, he would have most likely continued on to prison and never get the chance to prove his innocence. His fleeing is a big gamble, but it was his only chance and choice at the time if he wanted to prove his innocence. Therefore, by fleeing, this reinforces his innocence because he had something to prove, if not to the marshalls and police then at least to himself. The forest then represented freedom and the chance to prove his innocence while the train wreck's calamity represented the chaos and impending doom of his death sentence. This connection is important because in addition to Kimble's actions, the setting also helps show off his innocence. The flee is an important, if not one of the most important, aspects to displaying his innocence.