FAQ for
The Fugitive (1993) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for The Fugitive can be found here.

For those too young to remember, The Fugitive was a TV series that ran from 1963-1967. It was created by American writer Roy Huggins [1914-2002]. It was rumored that Huggins based the show on the real-life story of Sam Sheppard, a doctor who was accused of murdering his wife and spent 10 years in the Ohio Penitentiary before his conviction was overturned, but Huggins has denied basing his series on Sheppard's case. Huggins has also said the series was loosely inspired by Les Miserables, with Kimble as the Jean Valjean character and Gerard as the Javert character. In fact, the name "Gerard" was chosen to be phonetically similar to Javert. The TV series was adapted for the big screen by American screenwriters David Twohy and Jeb Stuart.

Those who have seen both the movie and the TV series say that the movie's plot -- Dr Richard Kimble is convicted of murdering his wife Helen (who was really killed by a one-armed man); Kimble escapes from custody and goes searching for him, all the while pursued by Inspector Gerard -- is consistent with the TV series. The main difference is that the TV series took four years to resolve the situation, whereas the movie took 90 minutes. During those four years, Kimble ran all over the country helping people, searching for the One-Armed Man, and trying to stay one step ahead of Gerard, who himself searched for and questioned approximately 80 one-armed men, with no success in finding the killer. Another notable difference is that the One-Armed Man in the TV show had no connection to Kimble, didn't kill his wife to frame him, and there was no Provasic or RDU-90 involved. Also, the murder went down differently in the TV series. Richard and Helen had argued over adoption, and Richard had left the house. When he came back, he nearly ran over the One-Armed Man in front of his house, unlike in the movie where he enters and struggles with him.

A few minor differences include the fact that Gerard's first name in the TV series was Philip (not Samuel), and he was a Lt. Detective (not a U.S. Marshal). In the TV series, the One-Armed Man's name was not Sykes, he was just a drifter, and he had no prosthetic. Also in the series, Richard was actually on the train being taken to prison to die by lethal injection when it derailed.

On the fact that Kimble (Harrison Ford)'s fingerprints were the only ones on the gun and on the bullets that killed Helen (Sela Ward), on the fact that Kimble's skin was found under Helen's fingernails, on the fact that there was no forceable entry, on the fact that Kimble was the sole beneficiary of Helen's life insurance policy, and on the telephone call that Helen made to 911, in which she said, "There's someone in my house...Richard...he's trying to kill me."

Although Helen does say "Richard" during the 911 call, most viewers believe that she was actually calling out to her husband to help her, perhaps having heard him just entering the house. Some have suggested that the One-Armed Man, Frederick Sykes (Andreas Katsulas), allowed her to make the call and may even have forced her to say Richard's name. Still, it's easy to see how the courts would think differently from the call.

When Kimble is being questioned by the police, they ask him how he get a scratch on his neck. He said that his wife scratched him when he was trying to help her.

In one of the commentaries, the director said there was a scene that was cut where Kimble goes into a drug store and buys the hair dye. They cut it because they figured most people would assume he bought it somewhere on the way to the truck stop.

She was just a nameless good samaritan who offered a ride to Kimble. Perhaps she was a stranger or perhaps he met her earlier at a diner. In the very next scene, the marshals then get a tip that one of their escaped fugitives is frequenting a woman's house having been picked up by her the previous night. The way it is filmed, however, the audience is led to believe that they have a tip on Kimble getting picked up and that the marshals are going to get him, but it turns out to be one of the other escaped convicts, Copeland (Eddie Bo Smith Jr.), staying at his girlfriend's house. U.S. Marshal Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) and his troops storm the house, Copeland grabs Deputy Newman (Tom Wood) and threatens to kill him unless..., so Gerard shoots Copeland point blank because, as he later whispers into Newman's deafened ear, "I don't bargain.".

As Kimble steps out of the line and starts walking away from the parade, you can see that the man walking next to him is carrying the coat in his left hand.

Joel (Joel Robinson)'s actual problem was not brought out during the movie. The best guess, made by some viewers with medical training, is that he had a tear in his aorta. This would cause blood to spill into the chest cavity, making it more and more difficult to breathe. The diagnosis of a tear in the aorta is further supported on the sheet where Kimble changes Joel's diagnosis. It appears to say "Depress Chest w/Poss FX" (fracture), and the diagram on the same sheet appears to say "Chest Trauma Poss Fx Sternum." When Kimble changes the order, he begins with the letters "AO" which are the first two letters of "aorta." A tear to the aorta requires immediate surgery. With all the havoc going on in the emergency room at the time, Kimble was probably afraid that no one would diagnose the problem and get Joel into the OR in time to save him. This diagnosis of a tear in the aorta is supported in the novelization.

Actually, it was Richard Kimble that was the intended target, not his wife. Sykes had been hired by Dr Charles Nichols to kill Richard. Earlier in the evening, at the benefit for the Children's Aid Foundation, he could be seen giving Richard back the keys to his car after having borrowed it. While using Kimble's car, he phoned Sykes and then stopped at the Kimbles' house to unlock the door. The plan was to kill Richard after he and Helen returned from the benefit. Unfortunately, Richard was called away to assist at surgery. When Sykes got there, Helen was the only one at home. Why Sykes killed Helen instead is unknown. Later in the movie, when Kimble asks that same question, "Why Helen?", he gets no answer either.

Because he was beginning to suspect that Provasic, the new wonder drug being developed by the Devlin MacGregor Pharmaceutical Company, was not so wonderful at all. Kimble was seeing more and more of the patients in the Provasic research program coming to surgery with severely damaged livers. The very night of Helen's murder, in fact, Kimble was called to perform surgery on yet another Provasic patient. The claim that the drug worked with no side effects, which Kimble was going to challenge, would have halted the release of the drug for general use and cost the drug company millions.

He starts to make the connection when he finds the photo of Sykes and Dr Alec Lentz, the head of MacGregor Pharmaceuticals, together. Kimble suddenly realizes that he himself was the intended target, not Helen, because of what he suspected about Provasic causing liver damage. At first, Kimble thinks it was Lentz who ordered the hit on him, until his friend and colleague, Dr Charles Nichols (Jeroen Krabbé) informs him that Lentz was killed in a car accident last summer. Kimble asks Nichols to give him access to the catalogued tissue samples in the Pathology Lab and then learns that healthy samples have been substituted for diseased samples. When Dr Wahlund (Jane Lynch) shows him that half of the samples Lentz approved were signed on the day he died and suggests that the samples could only have been approved by someone else who had access, the puzzle is complete -- because there was only one other person who had that access.

Kimble walks into the conference room where Nichols is speaking about the virtues of Provasic. Kimble confronts Nichols with the fact that he changed the liver samples after Lentz died (he was the only one with access). As Nichols leaves the room, Kimble says to the crowd, "He falsified his research so that RDU-90 could be approved and Devlin MacGregor could give you Provasic." Kimble pursues Nichols onto the roof. A fight ensues, and they both end up falling through a skylight and landing on an elevator, which starts to descend. Nichols comes to consciousness before Kimble and stops the elevator on the laundry floor. Just as the elevator door is closing, Kimble shoves his hand through, opens it, and follows. Gerard and Deputy Cosmo (Joe Pantoliano) follow the elevator to the laundry room, looking for Kimble. Nichols hits Cosmo with a swinging girder, Cosmo goes down on the floor, and Nichols takes his gun. Now it's just Kimble, Gerard, and Nichols. Gerard calls out to Kimble that he knows Kimble is innocent and that it was Sykes who killed his wife. When Nichols steps out from cover and aims the gun at Gerard, Kimble hits Nichols with a pipe, and he's out for the count. Gerard puts down his gun, and he and Kimble look at each other. "They killed my wife," Kimble says, and Gerard replies, "I know it, Richard. I know it...but it's over now. Whew! You know, I'm glad. I need the rest." In the next scene, Cosmo is being wheeled out on a gurney, talking about taking a holiday. Gerard leads Kimble, who is handcuffed, to a squad car while the reporters fire off questions. When they're in the car, Gerard takes the handcuffs off Kimble and hands him an icepack. Kimble says, "I thought you didn't care." Gerard laughs, and says, "I don't. Don't tell anybody, ok?" The car drives off. The end.

In the novelization, it was stated that Sykes killed Lentz. However, it's not explained in the movie whether Lentz was murdered or he died in a real accident. The important thing is that, on the day Lentz died, all those fake tissue samples were approved. The question now becomes: Did Lentz die accidentally and Nichols took the opportunity to approve the samples or did Nichols have Lentz killed so that he could approve the samples? The answer to that is that we don't know.

Gerard was trying to demonstrate to Kimble that he was out of options. He could either trust him, give up peacefully, and take the chance that Gerard would help him---or he could keep running and trying to get away (thus proving he was guilty) and Gerard would be forced to shoot him.

Kimble was handcuffed for "show". Once in the police car, Gerard took off the handcuffs because he knew that Kimble did not commit the murder. However, the only way for Richard Kimble to be found not guilty and set free was from a court of law, not because a U.S Marshal said so. Based on that, Kimble was technically still an escaped convict.