ComingSoon Senior Editor Spencer Legacy spoke with The Fugitive director Andrew Davis about the 30th anniversary 4K rerelease of the Harrison Ford-led action movie. The filmmaker discussed the dynamic between Ford and Tommy Lee Jones as well as how the movie has held up over three decades. The Fugitive is now available on 4K.
“Wrongfully accused of murdering his wife, Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) escapes from the law in an attempt to find her killer and clear his name,” reads the film’s synopsis. “Pursuing him is a team of U.S. marshals led by Deputy Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones), a determined detective who will not rest until Richard is captured. As Richard leads the team through a series of intricate chases, he discovers the secrets behind his wife’s death and struggles to expose the killer before it is too late.”
Spencer Legacy: The Fugitive has such a legacy all these years later. It’s been parodied on The Simpsons and in Leslie Nielsen’s Wrongfully Accused, and people still talk about it to this day. What’s it like to see your work live on and remain so iconic for so long?
Andrew Davis: Well, it’s great. It’s a blessing that you’re not forgotten, and people still appreciate it. What’s really interesting is recently, we’ve had screenings because of the 30th anniversary, and it’s getting reviewed by a whole new set of critics who are in their thirties. Some of them remember being taken as kids by their parents to see the movie.
So the fact that it still works and lives on in this age — because of the empathy you have for Harrison, the unjustly accused man, and what you have going on with the look of the movie … it doesn’t seem dated, you know? It seems like it could happen tomorrow, and the fact that it’s about a drug protocol that was causing all these problems for these characters is something that people can relate to today.
Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones don’t meet too much in the movie, but they have this amazing dynamic. When did you know that those two were really the perfect leads for this film?
Well, Harrison was involved in the project before I was. He saw Under Siege and said, “Let’s get this guy to direct the movie.” [Laughs]. And of course, Tommy was in Under Siege, and this is the third film I did with Tommy, so it was a no-brainer. I wanted Tommy right away. I figured that because he was so great in Under Siege, I knew he would be perfect for this character. So I was very lucky to have two incredible leading men to be the mainstays of this picture.
What is it that makes you and Tommy Lee Jones such a winning combo?
I let him do his thing. [Laughs]. You create an environment that’s real, and you give him all the things that he needs to flourish and bring out what he’s capable of doing. In Under Siege, it was an Elton John character, and we decided to make it a Stevie Ray Vaughan character. So he got into that work because he knew about that. But Tommy has great resources, and so does Harrison. If you look at Harrison, he doesn’t have a lot to say in the movie, but his body and his ability to react to things … I remember we were shooting the dam sequence, and Harrison’s going like this, and Tommy says, “He’s the greatest silent actor in the world.”
On a similar note, the US Marshals have so much fun chemistry. Was it challenging to make the antagonist group of the movie so endearing to the audience?
No. No. It’s funny because there was an executive who said, “What do you need all those Marshalls around Tommy for?” And I said, “Because they’ll have somebody to play with. It’ll give him a leadership role.” So that’s what happened. The diversity of those different people — in terms of their size, age, and ethnicity — helps make him a leader, you know?
Definitely. I also read that for the St. Patrick’s Day parade scene, the parade was actually just happening and that you filmed there. It wasn’t put on for the movie. What was filming in that environment like?
Well, I had wanted to use the St. Patrick’s Day parade in my first movie, Stony Island. Mayor [Richard J.] Daley died, so I shot his funeral instead. So we knew that after this big chase through City Hall, we couldn’t do a French Connection car chase. So I said, “Let’s see if we can get ‘them to disappear in the crowd of the St. Patrick’s Day parade,” which was just going to be a week or so later. We got permission, and we just did it.
Nobody knew we were there. The plumbers knew we were there, but we were just invisible, working in the crowd with a Steadicam. And, as a matter of fact, the film’s going to be rereleased theatrically on St. Patrick’s Day this year, with that being a kickoff. [Laughs]. But the Blu-ray is incredible. The 4K Blu-ray is going to look better than any way you can see the movie — even in the movie theaters.
