Synopsis for
The Fugitive (1993) More at IMDbPro »

Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) is a successful , University of Chicago-trained, Chicago based vascular surgeon who returns home from an operation after a party one evening to find his wife (Sela Ward) dying following a brutal attack and a mysterious one-armed man with a prosthetic arm escaping. Despite his attempts to save her and his testimony about the one-armed man, Kimble is convicted of first-degree murder, due to evidence such as a misunderstood 9-1-1 call, his fingerprints found "on the lamp, the gun, and the bullets," and no signs of forced entry by the one-armed man. Kimble is sentenced to death by lethal injection. While being transported to prison by bus, one prisoner fakes a seizure, pretending to be choking. One of the guards unlocks the gate separating him from the prisoner to assist him. The prisoner stabs him with a concealed sharpened toothbrush, and chaos ensues inside. Another guard shoots the prisoner with a shotgun, but in a struggle with another prisoner he accidentally shoots the driver. The bus crashes through a guardrail, rolls down a hill, and lands on a set of train tracks. The light from an approaching train appears, and Kimble manages to pull himself and the stabbed guard to safety before train rams the bus. He is freed from his chains by another prisoner, then flees the scene on foot. As a fugitive from justice, he becomes the quarry of Deputy United States Marshal Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones), who leads a team of man-hunters from the US Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force. There are many close calls where Richard almost gets captured, mostly brought on by Kimble's compassionate instincts as a doctor. The first instance is at a hospital after Kimble shaves off his beard, and changes into a doctor's uniform. He sees one of the corrections officers wounded in the revolt and helps the man, who recognizes him, as he is being brought into the hospital. Kimble tries to escape by stealing an ambulance but is forced to a halt by a police road block in a tunnel in a dam. He exits the ambulance and is pursued by Gerard through the dam's drainage system. At one point, Kimble confronts Gerard and insists on his innocence. Gerard, whose mission is simply to capture Kimble and not to solve the crime, tells him "I don't care." Kimble tries to continue running but Gerard eventually traps him near the end of a spillway. Kimble escapes by leaping a great height down the spillway of the dam into the river below.

Tommy Lee Jones as Marshal Gerard, the character that gave him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor The encounter with Gerard at the dam makes Kimble realize that the authorities will always accept his guilt as a matter of fact, and that the only way to ever recover his freedom is by finding the real killer. The fact that Kimble pointed a gun at Gerard during this encounter gives the Marshal a strong motive to pursue his fugitive vigorously. As Gerard's team of Marshals hunts down the remaining escapees, Kimble returns to Chicago to search for the one-armed man who killed his wife. He also makes contact with many of his former friends and associates from the medical community, virtually all of whom have never believed Kimble to be guilty and are more than willing to help him. He also meets his close friend Dr. Charles Nichols (Jeroen Krabbé), who gives Kimble money, becomes a contact for him, and offers to help in any way. Later, when confronted by Gerard, Nichols boldly tells him that he should give up because Kimble is too smart to ever be captured. Kimble rents an apartment and there he makes fake ID cards to pose as a janitor to get access to Cook County Hospital, where he searches the computers in the prosthetic limb area for patient information matching the description of the one-armed man. Unfortunately the people he has chosen to stay with include a drug dealer and as the police arrive to arrest the dealer, Kimble has another close call. The drug dealer informs police that Kimble is living with them. While police arrive at the apartment, Kimble is confronted at the hospital by a doctor (Julianne Moore) who had seen him change a young patient's medical orders so that he could have a life-saving operation, but Kimble manages to escape. Gerard, always in hot pursuit, arrives with the police and wonders why someone as smart as Kimble would risk capture by going to such a high-profile place as a hospital. At that moment, a man with one arm walks by and Gerard realizes what Kimble was probably trying to do. Going through the list of men with prosthetic limbs, Kimble discovers that one is in jail for armed robbery. He visits this man but sees that it is not his wife's murderer. Trying to understand Kimble's movements, Gerard also found that same man on a list of one-armed men with criminal records. Gerard arrives shortly after Kimble giving him a close call when they pass on the stairs, but he manages to escape into a Saint Patrick's Day parade with a hat to disguise himself. Kimble's innate intelligence keeps him one step ahead of Gerard who begins to have doubts as to Kimble's guilt, particularly after Kimble finally finds and breaks into the house of his one-armed quarry, Frederick Sykes (Andreas Katsulas), finding evidence of Sykes' ties to Kimble's hospital and deliberately drawing Gerard's team to the house. Suspicious, Gerard and his Marshals begin to investigate Sykes and Kimble's hospital.

Dr. Kimble fights the one-armed man Kimble suspects that the one-armed man had been sent by someone working with Devlin MacGregor (a pharmaceutical company), to kill Kimble on the night of his wife's murder to silence him (though, it isn't clear yet why). This hypothesis is because of pictures associating Sykes with one of Kimble's fellow doctors who was working with Devlin MacGregor (which turns out was the company holding the gala the night his wife was murdered). Kimble starts to look into links between the fellow doctor and Devlin MacGregor and comes to a conclusion. However, Sykes confronts Kimble on a Chicago 'L' train, holding Kimble at gunpoint. When a police officer (Neil Flynn) sees Kimble on the train and orders him to surrender, Sykes turns around and shoots the officer three times, killing him. Kimble then pulls the emergency brake on the train. The one-armed man, having no available hand to grab onto anything with so as to stop himself, starts falling right down the center aisle of the train, and Kimble punches him in the face. In the fight that ensues, Kimble breaks Sykes' only functioning (and gun-wielding) arm and wrestles the gun out of his hand, punches him once more in the face, kicks him in the stomach, and pistol whips him in the head, completely disabling Sykes. Kimble keeps Sykes's gun, takes the dead policeman's gun and handcuffs, and fastens Sykes to a pole, knocking him unconscious after doing so. Kimble kicks open one of the windows and flees to the medical conference. However, Kimble is now thought to be a cop killer. The showdown occurs at a medical conference at a hotel where the truth is finally revealed: Kimble was going to present evidence that an experimental drug, called Provasic, nearing FDA approval was causing serious liver damage, and if revealed would have been detrimental to Devlin MacGregor, the pharmaceutical company producing Provasic. Dr. Nichols, who was working with Devlin Macgregor and stood to become very rich if Provasic was approved by the FDA, was covering up the medical evidence and gave the one-armed man the key to Kimble's home. Armed with incontrovertible evidence, Kimble challenges Nichols, who is giving a speech about Provasic at the conference, with what he knows about the conspiracy and pursues him out of the conference room. They begin to fight through the hotel. Although Nichols breaks a chair over Kimble, Kimble's determination keeps him going, and Kimble eventually kicks him in the groin and punches him in the face, until Kimble finally kicks him down a fire escape. Nichols then runs for his life across the rooftop. However, the Chicago Police Department has a helicopter watching the rooftop, wrongly believing Kimble to be a cop killer and intend to take him down at any cost. Kimble is about to catch up with Nichols when Gerard, who knows Kimble is innocent and needs to keep him (and himself) alive, tells the helicopter to back off. Kimble runs across the rooftop and encounters Nichols, who takes a swing at him. Kimble dodges the blow and proceeds to fight and defeat Nichols. Kimble punches Nichols and throws him and himself through a skylight, onto the top of a moving elevator. They both get off on the laundry floor. In the final showdown in the hotel's laundry, Gerard calls out to Kimble, laying out everything he knows about Kimble's innocence and the conspiracy against him, and urging him to turn himself in to Gerard before the police kill him. Nichols knocks out Deputy Marshal Cosmo Renfro (Joe Pantoliano) by swinging a beam transport at him, and takes his gun. Having heard Gerard's announcement, Nichols comes up behind Gerard to shoot him, but Kimble, in one more act of decency, saves Gerard's life by killing Nichols with two strong blows from a massive lead pipe. At last, Gerard takes Kimble into custody and out of the hotel. At the same time, Sykes is also taken into custody, leaving the Chicago police trying to explain what had happened regarding its previous arrest of Kimble as well as recent events. In the police car, Gerard symbolically unlocks Kimble's handcuffs and offers him an ice-pack for his hands before they drive away. Gerard had stated earlier in the movie that he didn't care if Kimble is innocent or not. Kimble asks Gerard "I thought you didn't care" to which Gerard responds by saying "I don't" and then laughing, and then telling Kimble not to tell anyone.