The Fugitive

The Fugitive (1993)

36 corrected entries

(26 votes)

Corrected entry: Before Dr. Nichols makes his speech, the host introduces him as Dr. Charles Lentz. Lentz was the surname of the other doctor who was killed in a car accident.

mightymick

Correction: He is introduced as Charles Nicholls.

No he's not! Watch it over! He is introduced wrongly.

I just watched it. He is introduced as "Dr. Charles Nichols."

Correction: This doesn't happen at all. The speaker is introduced as Dr Charles Nichols. This entry is simply wrong.

Corrected entry: The judge sentences Kimble to death by lethal injection. The judge does not have the power to decide the method of execution.

MikeH

Correction: In 1993, Illinois used lethal injection as the only form of execution. The only time they would use the electric chair was if something happened where lethal injection was not viable or did not work, however, it was never a primary option. Therefore, there were no other methods for anyone to choose and judge was merely letting Kimble know how he will be executed.

Bishop73

Corrected entry: When Kimble is being chased out of the courthouse, he tells an officer, "There's a man in a blue top coat waving a gun around and screaming - and a woman", yet Gerard was the only one chasing Kimble.

Correction: He said "screaming AT a woman'. Not AND a woman.

Brad

Corrected entry: When Kimble is being interviewed by the police, a cop says "book him." We later learn the police were still trying to find out if a one armed man could've done it. The police can't arrest someone if the investigation is still ongoing. An arrest is supposed to mark the end of an investigation, the trial is the next stage.

MikeH

Correction: The police never took the 'one-armed man' story seriously, and certainly never looked into it with any real interest. As was shown later, the police believe that Kimble killed his wife for the money and charged him on that basis. Fred Sykes is shown claiming to have been interviewed and to have a (false) alibi for the murder; which indicates that the police at best did a cursory check of any local 'one armed men' in order to discredit Kimble's defence.

Corrected entry: Sykes told Deputy Gerard that he wasn't even in Chicago that night and 15 people verified it. (01:30:00)

Correction: Yes. And then they learned he got back to Chicago in time to commit the murders.

MasterOfAll

Corrected entry: In the flashback scene, Kimball is introduced to Lentz at the fundraiser on the night of the murder. The hitman is also obviously in Chicago to commit the murder. But it is later established and made much use of in the plot development that both Lentz and the hitman were in Cancun on a sail fishing junket on the night of the murder.

Correction: The images of the fishing trip are used to prove that Sykes and Lentz knew each other. It is never suggested that the trip was supposed to be at the same time as the murder took place.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: In the shot right before Kimble jumps off of the dam, you can see the dam is angled out. There is no way he could have cleared it when he jumped.

Correction: He didn't clear it. He jumped outward as far as he could, then fell into the falling water on the side of the dam before landing in the river below.

BocaDavie

Corrected entry: When Dr. Richard Kimble is nearly run over by the freight train, look closely at the axles of the locomotive passing overhead. Diesel locomotives have large electric motors on each axle that actually propel the train. These electric motors are missing which would be similar to a car without a transmission. There is no way for a locomotive to move under its own power without these electric motors.

Correction: This only applies to diesel-electric locomotives, not direct diesel locomotives.

This is a diesel-electric locomotive. You can even see the matching gear on the otherwise bare axle.

Corrected entry: After the bus has crashed they show a shot of a dead convict with his feet against a broken window, looking out at the train. Two or three shots go by and his feet are in a different position each time.

Correction: The stabbed prison officer is lying get on top of him and you can actually see the legs move in relation to the guard moving on the body.

Corrected entry: Kimble searches records of people who have had prosthetic arms installed, which is how he eventually finds Frederick Sykes. Kimble and his lawyers should have been given access to those records prior to his trial, and if so, there's a good chance they would have found a record of Frederick Sykes.

mightymick

Correction: It's unlikely that Kimble was allowed to just browse a medical database and meet the resulting names face to face back while he was on trial. It would have been the police following up on Kimble's claims of a one armed perp, but they already didn't believe Kimble was telling the truth, so they wouldn't have pursued it the way Kimble would have wanted. Plus, Sykes himself mentioned that he was questioned about the murder a year ago, but he had an alibi. It was only after a determined Kimble broke into his house and violated due process that they were able to actually begin to get evidence.

Garlonuss

Corrected entry: When Richard Kimble is walking, there is one shot of him walking into a train tunnel. The camera is mounted on top of a train and the train is clearly visible at the bottom of the screen. You see the train for a few seconds and then you see the shot focusing in on Richard, as if they've just discovered their mistake.

Correction: This is not a mistake as such as it only appears in the full frame version of the movie. Originally the film was shot on 4:3 film but framed for 1.85:1 presentation. The final negative would then have been masked top and bottom so any information outside of the widescreen area could not be seen (including in this instance the edge of the train). However on the 4:3 home video version, rather than cropping the picture and losing information at the side of the screen, a compromise has been made and the negative has been unmasked instead which, while revealing more detail at the top and bottom of the screen, now allows the train to be seen.

Corrected entry: When Samuel arrives at Cook County Hospital after learning that Kimble might be there, it is pitch black. In the next scene when he is questioning Dr. Eastman, it is broad daylight out.

Correction: It's a time cut, not a mistake. Gerard arrived at the hospital; likely spoke to either hospital administration and security; questioned doctors, nurses, patients, and hospital personnel; all of which takes time. Nothing about the scene between Gerard and Eastman suggests that it takes place moments after his arrival at the hospital. Dr. Eastman is wearing a jacket, suggesting it's the end of her shift; Gerard speaks to her as if she'd already been questioned by his people; and at no point does Gerard run out the door to try to locate Kimble who slipped out during his arrival.

JC Fernandez

Corrected entry: When the cops get called to the one-armed man's house: 1) When they start listing his address off the call tracer, they give an address that does not exist. 2) Even if it did exist, it's not on the South Side - it would be in the Loop, less than half a mile from where they are. 3) When they finally pull up to the house, the address actually on the house doesn't match the address they supposedly traced the call to - it's in the 11000 block, not the 200 block. 4) An address on the 11000 block of that street would be outside of the city of Chicago, and out of the jurisdiction of Chicago cops; yet they conduct a stakeout of his house anyway.

Correction: To address those points 1 & 2: This film also uses a fictional hospital ('Chicago Memorial') and a fictional lock up where Kimble visits a one armed man then evades the Marshalls. The one armed man's address not exisiting in reality is no more a mistake than these other two examples. In the world of this film, the address exists and does so at the specified location. As for point 3): The US Marshalls have instructed the police to stakeout the house in their search for Kimble. Co-operation between police from different jurisdictions is hardly unusual in major cases.

Okay; that leaves us with point 3): that the cops trace the call to "256 South St. Lawrence," but when they pull up, the address on the building is in the 11000 block.

Corrected entry: In the scene when Kimble jumps from the train, a moment later the bus is demolished by the train and roars past Kimball. A moment later, Kimble is almost run over by the engine, indicating he must have run down the tracks faster than the train.

Correction: A few moments after smashing into the bus, we see one of the cars (which may also be an engine-type car) decouple from the car in front and derail, almost running Kimble down. It may be an engine car, but it was not at the front of the train.

JC Fernandez

Corrected entry: In the crime scene photos and the flashbacks shown during Kimble's trial, the murdered Helen Kimble is lying on her side (where she died making the 911 call). Later, in Kimble's nightmare, she's lying on her back, when he turned her over to try to revive her, and later embrace her when he realized she was dead. He admitted to moving her, so shouldn't she have been in this position in the earlier scenes? Certainly for the crime scene photos at least.

Correction: The position was different in his NIGHTMARE, his mind. Kimble would be unable to recall the ordeal in perfect detail. We should only consider the crime scene photos accurate.

Corrected entry: When the police officer is describing Kimble to a man he thinks isn't him (really is), he says "brown hair". Kimble didn't have brown hair - it was gray.

Correction: Character mistake: he misremembers. Happens all the time.

Phixius

Corrected entry: On the train towards the end Sykes kills the transit cop, and Richard Kimble is subsequently blamed for it. However, throughout the scene of Sykes killing the cop and his and Kimble's fight, there are at least two other people in the same car watching the whole thing who would be able to say with certainty that Kimble was not the one who killed the cop. He should never have been a suspect in that killing.

Correction: The logic however behind that is the police and everyone else knew what the audience does. In reality once Kimble and Sykes got off the train there was no telling what happened to those two people or what they told the police. Added to this Kimble was identified by the transit cop before being shot. The fact they are chasing a convicted murderer it wouldn't be too far of a stretch to think he was involved with the killing on the train. In the end Kimble is exonerated so obviously they must have eventually discovered he didn't kill the cop.

Lummie

Correction: This mistake has already been corrected.

Corrected entry: At the end of the film when Kimble is fighting the other doctor on the roof of the hotel, they crash through a glass skylight into the elevator shaft. Tommy Lee Jones and Joey Pantoliano get to the broken window and look down at them, Joey holding his pistol out as if to shoot Kimble in the elevator shaft. Jones says no to him and he reholsters. Joey's pistol in this scene appears to be a stainless steel one, either a 1911 or a Smith and Wesson. However, inside the hotel later, in the climactic laundry room scene, Joey is holding a mid sized model Glock (all matte black), which is the one the other doc steals from him and tries to shoot Jones with.

Correction: Might it be possible that Joey Pantoliano's character follows the same protocol as exhibited earlier by Tommy Lee Jones' character, they carry more than one weapon, of different types? Remember at the dam, when Jones' lost his gun after a fall, and he had a second weapon on him?

Corrected entry: When Tommy Lee Jones has found out that Kimble is in "the presidential suite" he turns the car and goes to the hotel. If you look at the way he is turning the wheel compared to in what direction the car actually moves you will see that it doesn't fit - the car turns around to the left but the wheel is turned to the right.

Correction: Turning the wheel to the right is not a mistake. It is a common driving technique called counter-steering. When they whip the car around you would need to do this as well. Anyone that has driven in the snow or ice will know what I'm talking about.

Continuity mistake: Kimble dyes his hair very dark to escape detection and dyed hair fades over time. For the rest of the movie his hair noticeably goes from darker shades to lighter shades and back again showing that the scenes were shot non-sequentially on different days with a fair amount of time in between.

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Trivia: Director Andrew Davis had Harrison Ford start the film with a beard, and then shave it off, rather than using a disguise for Richard Kimble throughout the film.

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Question: Towards the end, before the confrontation with Kimble and Nicholls, the guy who was tracing Kimble's phone records tells the Marshalls that Kimble telephoned Sykes on the night of his wife's murder. But obviously it wasn't Kimble calling Sykes, it was Sykes using Kimble's phone. But why would Sykes be calling himself?

jenn_s_h85

Chosen answer: He didn't. A key plot point is that Nichols borrowed Kimble's car on the night of the murder. The call to Sykes, which is expressly stated by the marshals as being on Kimble's car phone, was from Nichols, presumably arranging to meet so that he could give Sykes Kimble's keys to get into his house to lie in wait for him.

Tailkinker

Thank you for explaining it. I've seen it several times and never realised how it went down.

And Tommy Lee Jones tells Kimble that they knew Nichols called Skyes from his car, but how? Wouldn't the more logical answer have been that the US Marshals thought that Kimble called Sykes from his car to tell the killer his wife was home alone? There is no way the US Marshalls would have known that the Kimble let Nichols borrow his call - that's the mistake in the movie! It actually should have made the Marshalls suspicious of Kimble, not exonerate him.

The Marshals know Kimble let Nichols borrow his car because Kimble told the police when he was initially interviewed following the murder. He gave a detailed account of his actions and whereabouts that night and mentioned that Nichols had borrowed his car. It didn't seem suspicious to the police at the time because Richard claimed he fought with a one armed man he didn't recognize; a story the police did not believe because there was no evidence of this and Kimble's wife "identified" her attacker as Richard. Gerard puts everything together when he realises that Nichols lied about knowing Lentz.

BaconIsMyBFF

How did Sam figure out that Nichols borrowed the vehicle and made the call to Sykes and gave him keys, etc? I know in the laundry he reveals that he knew this but when/how did he figure it out?

Answer: This is more of a question really. What kind of defense attorney did this high dollar, Dr. Kimble hire who do not show their defendant pictures of the one-armed men the police question? How do his attorneys not ask him "OK, which of these one-armed men did you fight with in your house?"

The prosecution is not required to inform the defense of every person the police interview or question. They are only required to give the defense whatever evidence they have against the accused. Simply questioning someone in a perceived dead only counts as evidence against the accused if the prosecutor mentions it in court. If the prosecutor were to say "We interviewed a one-armed man named Sykes and he says he doesn't know you", then Kimble's defense would be required to be given access to Sykes. We can assume this never happened.

BaconIsMyBFF

The Chicago police DID question Sykes after the Kimble murder. Review the scene where Sykes returns to his apartment after Kimble has been there. Girard starts asking Sykes questions, at first Sykes says he doesn't know anything about Kimble but then "remembers" that he had been interviewed by the police right after the Kimble murder. However, Sykes says that he gave the police an alibi, with 15 people supposedly confirming that Sykes was on a business trip and not in Chicago. The movie then implies that Sykes had been a Chicago cop and lost his arm "in the line of duty." Remember that the Chicago police focused on Kimble pretty quickly. Their investigators may have interviewed Sykes, but they likely didn't even come close to considering him as a potential murderer. Even with Sykes likely matching Kimble's description of the one-armed man, the police likely saw Sykes as a former cop... A former cop who had an alibi confirmed by 15 people. As I understand it, prosecutors don't have to tell defense attorneys about everyone that the cops question. They only have to tell the defense about potential witnesses that might be called in connection to the criminal trial. In this scenario, Sykes wouldn't have been part of the criminal trial (Again, supposedly on a business trip confirmed by 15 people on the night of the murder) and thus Kimble and his lawyers would never have known about his existence.

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