“You missed your stop.”

Harrison Ford plays a surgeon by the name of Richard Kimble, who comes home to find that his wife has been attacked and killed by an unknown man. After the killer gets away, Kimble is soon arrested and convicted of murdering his wife, and he is then given the death sentence. While on his way to a state prison, a criminal on the bus creates a bit of a commotion, causing the bus to crash and Kimble to escape. On the run, Kimble has to hide from a task force of U.S. Marshals, one of whom is leading it, named Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones), while also finding the evidence that he is, in fact, innocent, and that his killer is still out there somewhere.

It had probably been around five years since I had last seen The Fugitive, and I had been eager to rewatch it for a while because I had a feeling that I would really love it again on rewatch. It turns out I was right because I had a blast while watching this film again. It is such a tension-filled thriller that never holds up when it comes to having you on the edge of your seat the entire time, and one that I think still stands the test of time as one of the better thriller movies, at least of the 90s, and at least from what I’ve seen. It’s also a quite complex film, and all of the complex layers only add to the thrills while at the same time never making the film feel convoluted in any way.

There are obviously two sides to this story - Richard Kimble’s whole mission to prove his innocence, as well as the U.S. Marshals’ hunt to find Kimble, and I’ll talk about the second one first. Tommy Lee Jones gives such a fun performance, and one where you can actually tell he was into playing this part (I’m looking at you, Batman Forever, wink, wink). Some of the lines he delivers are quite funny, to be honest, but they never take away from the tension of the film in any way at all. It’s just also fun to watch the U.S. Marshals on the hunt in the first place, because of how many times Kimble throws them off and leads them to so many different places.

When it comes to Richard Kimble’s side of the story, it is a bit more interesting simply because it’s the main part of the movie, and what the movie is about in the first place. The film starts off by letting you know immediately that he is innocent, so obviously, you root for him because not only is he innocent, but he is also a good man, too. There is a really sweet scene that doesn’t really add anything to the plot, but lets you know just how caring a person Kimble is, and it’s one of my favorite scenes in the entire movie. Going back to the whole point, though, the reason his run from the police is so interesting is that this isn’t just a game of cat and mouse; there are added stakes because if Kimble can’t find the evidence that someone else killed his wife, well, his punishment won’t be worse because he already got the death sentence, but, I mean, he literally got the death sentence.

I also find the pacing in The Fugitive to be quite remarkable, to say the least. As I already said, it has you on the edge of your seat the entire time, but even aside from that, it’s such an interesting movie that progresses its plot in the most interesting of ways that you can’t help but stop watching and figure out what is going to happen by the end. I really mean it that once this movie starts going, there isn’t ever really a dull moment or section of it that drags in any way at all.

Another element that I didn’t really recognize when I saw this five years ago, simply because I just wasn’t as big into movies back then, and something that really pleasantly surprised me on this viewing was the score. The composer is none other than James Newton Howard, the man who worked on films such as the first two Dark Knight movies, all of The Hunger Games series, The Sixth Sense, Signs, Nightcrawler, and a movie in my top twenty of all time, partially because of the score, Unbreakable. As generic as it may sound, I cannot emphasize enough how perfectly each track composed for this movie fits the scene it was made for. The whole soundtrack has essentially the same goal - to elevate the tension, but each in its own, unique way, and man is the soundtrack cool to listen to.

Now, even on top of everything that I’ve said already, I have yet another positive that might just top them all. The Fugitive is not only a fun and extremely entertaining sort of “investigative thriller,” but it’s also an incredibly clever one. I’m not going to give anything away, so don’t worry, but all of the answers that we get, which happen through little investigations Kimble does throughout the runtime, which are fun in their own right, are all so satisfying and tie into previous elements of the story so perfectly. Everything comes together in an extremely satisfying way, and, since I kind of forgot most of the movie since the last time I had seen it, a very surprising way.

The only negative I could come up with is that there are definitely a few plot conveniences. Nothing crazy whatsoever, and nothing that would probably bother anyone, even people who, for any reason, didn’t jive with this movie, but there are some things that happen in the story that probably wouldn’t happen in real life. Again, I’m not going to give anything away, but one of the biggest examples is actually part of the premise itself, with the bus just so happening to crash so that this story can actually happen. As I said, it’s nothing too insane that it would take you out of the movie, but if I’m going to give a fair review of the film, I have to mention it.

As you could probably already tell from this review, and as I basically already said, I definitely wasn’t let down by this rewatch, and I, in fact, loved it. To sort of sum things up, it’s a great thriller with so much tension and so much cleverness to it.