Top 100 Movies Of The 1990's: #14 The Fugitive

Box Office: $183.9 Million

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Tommy Lee Jones), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing

Oscar Wins: Best Supporting Actor (Tommy Lee Jones)

MovieRankings.Net: 94/100

Available To Stream: Amazon Prime ($4) Apple TV ($4)

The Fugitive has no business being this great. It really has no business being anything more than a decent late night watch on cable. It's a manhunt movie directed by Andrew Davis. Yet somehow, it is one of the greatest action movies ever made.

Tommy Lee Jones gets much of the credit for this movie elevating itself to becoming a Best Picture nominee. That's absolutely fair as he is terrific and deserving of the Supporting Actor Oscar he won. But, don't lose sight of the amazing job Harrison Ford does here. Ford taking the movie so seriously gives it such huge stakes. This is like the Nolan Dark Knight movies elevating themselves to becoming more than just "comic book movies". The premise of taking a 1960's tv show about chasing a one armed man around could have gone in a much campier direction. But with Ford reacting so honestly to his wife dying and the situation he is in, it becomes a much better film. 

Giphy Images.

I brought up Tommy Lee Jones earlier but how great is it that the Academy gave an Oscar to a guy in an action movie? This is like when Marisa Tomei won for My Cousin Vinny a year earlier. Both were in genres (action and comedy) that are usually ignored by Oscar voters. They of course, went right back to ignoring these genres but this was a nice little blip.

It's pretty cool that Tommy Lee Jones became a movie star after this movie came out when he was 47 years old. He was nominated for an Oscar a couple years earlier for JFK and was a known actor but The Fugitive elevated him into a different stratosphere. He played it pretty wisely by choosing projects like Men In Black, The Client, Double Jeopardy and giving a bizarre performance in the very successful Batman Forever. 

Giphy Images.

Rewatching this for the blog, I was asking myself "why is this SO good?" Obviously the acting which I mentioned is fantastic. The script is smart and strong but it's not revolutionary. I think what sets this apart is how this movie moves. The pacing is somehow breakneck but never feels rushed. In the first 40 minutes alone, you get the murder of Kimball's wife, Kimball being found guilty, the insane bus getting hit by train sequence and then Girard having the famous "I don't care" confrontation with Kimball and then this.

All of that in just the first 40 minutes! 

It's also remarkable how well this movie has aged. Obviously you're not seeing cell phones but what people say and how they react to things feels just as modern as it did when this came out. I saw this in the theaters when I was 13 and was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I watched this again this week over 30 years later and was still widely entertained. 

It's the greatest action movie of the decade.


14. The Fugitive

15. The Truman Show

16. Fargo

17. Swingers

18. Reservoir Dogs

19. There's Something About Mary

20. Sleepers

21. Schindler's List

22. Rushmore

23. Fight Club

24. Saving Private Ryan

25. True Romance

26. Dumb & Dumber

27. Kingpin

28. Donnie Brasco

29. Heat 

30. Terminator 2: Judgement Day

31. Rounders

32. Unforgiven

33. Trainspotting

34. The Game

35. Out Of Sight

36. Carlito's Way

37. Seven

38. L.A. Confidential

39. Speed

40. Gattaca

41. Misery

42. Tombstone

43. Ransom

44. Wayne's World

45. The Insider

46. Back To The Future Part III

47. A Bronx Tale

48. The People Vs. Larry Flynt

49. Eyes Wide Shut

50. The Sandlot

51. Happy Gilmore

52. Contact

53. The Green Mile

54. Man On The Moon

55. Boyz N The Hood

56. Grosse Pointe Blank

57. Independence Day

58. The Rainmaker

59. Go

60. The Firm

61. Magnolia

62. The Talented Mr. Ripley

63. Tommy Boy

64. The Usual Suspects

65. In The Line Of Fire

66. My Cousin Vinny

67. Awakenings

68. JFK

69. Toy Story

70. Home Alone

71. Jerry Maguire

72. Titanic

73. Billy Madison

74. Apollo 13

75. Braveheart

76. Edward Scissorhands

77. Cape Fear

78. The River Wild

79. What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

80. 12 Monkeys

81. Stir Of Echoes

82. Mission: Impossible

83. Total Recall

84. Quiz Show

85. For Love Of The Game

86. Being John Malkovich

87. Men In Black

88. Scream

89. Alive

90. Three Kings

91. Glengarry Glen Ross

92. Die Hard With A Vengeance

93. The Blair Witch Project

94. Twister

95. Dirty Work

96. Election

97. Tremors

98. Any Given Sunday

99. The Wedding Singer

100. Clerks