The Fugitive character analysis

DR. RICHARD KIMBLE: BEING A GOOD GUY

Bypassing the devoted allegiance of millions of people towards Harrison Ford as an icon-like impersonification of a positive character, a living synonym of the adventure of his era, the very first minutes of The Fugitive story foster the mysterious murder with an unobvious detective puzzle. Equally, the attentive viewer benefits from the parallel montage, a means of swapping the protagonist in his bloodied shirt with a retrospective of the previous evening and the crime itself. As far as we experience the fact that Doctor Richard Kimble clashed with the murderer of his wife, the story pushes forward a contrast between the tragic events and the true image of the main character on the one hand and forms public opinion (within this cinematic universe) on the other. The prologue scenes demonstrate good faith with the audience, but there is no ace in one’s narrative sleeve. Moments after the initial doubts, we fully entrust our belief to Harrison Ford’s character, and the story is to be rendered through the prism of The Fugitive character analysis. 

Regardless of the heap of the experienced tragedy, the emotional and physical exhaustion, the worsening of the public mind, the breach of justice and biased attitude, the start of a manhunt, and the deprivation of all the privileges, Dr. Richard Kimble does not harden his heart against the whole world and other people. He distances himself from becoming a real criminal with assorted actions. At the moment of Kimble’s escapade, the doctor had been exposed to public humiliation and ostracism both by the powers of the legal system and mass media, left face to face with his powerlessness, separated from his friends and craft, and finally, his home. In addition to that, Richard remains ‘a good guy’, a man with virtues and principles who used to live to pay care to other individuals for all his mature life. Even under the threat of losing his life, being a fugitive beyond the law, he is true to himself in saving the lives of the wounded officer and later a boy, two strange people to Richard Kimble. 

Doctor Kimble stinks at taking a life for the sake of his salvation, which comes to light due to a memorable scene within a dam tube when a convicted felon does not inflict harm to a U.S. Marshall. Regardless of the revelation of the truth about the perpetrators and murderers in the final scenes, Richard does not dare to take the law into his own hands and kill either Frederick Sykes or Dr. Charles Nichols. As the story goes to the end, Richard says, ‘They killed my wife’, thus drawing a line between who should be treated as criminals. One can make an argument that Richard escaped from custody, performed picking and stealing, falsified the ID to enter the hospital, and finally broke into the apartment of Sykes. At the same time, this lawbreaking fails to characterize Richard as a criminal. Relatedly, the very fact of his escapade should be regarded as the only way to find the indeed murderers of Mrs. Kimble and to clear one’s name, and finally, to save one’s life from the death penalty for a crime Kimble never committed. 

Richard Kimble finds himself to be an obstinate individual, trusts no chances, and has rare reliance on other people not to run them into danger. Richard does not rely on good timing, which holds up well in contrast to almost every circumstance facing his battle for truth. Summing up, the personal identity of the main character gets the better of the fact that Kimble’s cinematic image has become the iconic one. ‘Does this guy ever quit?’. All while being in advance of his chasers, Richard pushes Marschall Gerard to breathe new life into the underlying circumstances of the case to force investigation with a vengeance. On the one hand, the ‘case closed’ is being reexamined by U.S. marshals and by the Doctor himself on the other. One step at a time, they dig to the roots of the missed clues, previously omitted in favor of the more obvious verdict, an easy one for the Chicago police.  

Each of the two principal characters acts as a master in his craft, faithful to their principles, and granted responsibility. U.S. Marshal Gerard keeps on going at the tail of the convicted felon, sidelining an attempt to dig deep into Kimble’s motives as well as into the background of the old case. Doctor Kimble is depicted as no less than an ace neurosurgeon and has been praised by his colleagues for years. In a meaningful contrast to Charles Nichols, who betrayed a best friend (Richard) and killed another one (Helen) to conceal the dangerous drug side effects for the sake of one’s profiteering, Kimble is clean-handed enough not to stand aside with the truth. Richard’s true purpose in life is to save lives, even with the fact that he is a wealthy and praised surgeon. He deserves credit for a scene of self-treatment, later with his care for the wounded officer, and, finally, with the iconic scene and the help of a boy. This last example is known as one of the most recognized ‘good deeds’ in movie history and plays the role of a final flourish for the image of Richard Kimble as a ‘goodie’. You will never find him; he’s too smart—another portraiture, which leads us to admiration for the escapee. 

REMAKING THE PUBLIC MIND OF DOCTOR KIMBLE

The detective officers of the Chicago Police Department provide their emotionless judgment far before the final verdict of the court. The factual relics of the case (the 911 phone call and blood under nails) form their only reasonable attitude towards the events and the main suspect, supposedly greedy enough to kill his wife, the stylish and wealthy representative of the Chicago privileged circles. His fingerprints are all over the lamp, the gun, and the bullets. And the good doctor’s skin is under her fingernails. The testimonials of Doctor Kimble seem to be flimsy and unconvincing; all the more so, witnessing a murderer with an artificial limb is an ominous argument in favor of the alternative version. Financially, you’re not going to be hurt after these things, are you? Detective Kelly sincerely believes in a chosen version due to the prism of his routine case and the criminals, in fact, socially distant enough from Richard Kimble. A short ‘verdict guilty’ scene in a courtroom comes across the prologue with a painful shadow over the image of the main character affirming a sentence and the inevitable death penalty. The Fugitive, as a detective story, initially confronts the social dogma of the unquestioned guilt of a man convicted as a criminal. 

Why did you run? Running only makes you look guilty. In the minds of Richard’s lawyer, the publicity, and particularly law-enforcement authorities, the very fact of the escapade serves as a fundamental argument to support the previously delivered judgment. At the same time, the story of Richard Kimble turns such habitual assertions upside down. Preserving the vital desire to face the murderers of his wife and to clear his good name without hiding his head in the sand, doctor Kimble acts in opposition to the characteristics and assumptions conventionally associated with jailbreakers and murderers. The short story side-line with Copeland is finished with a bullet from Samuel Gerard, all while the second escapee had acted aggressively and predictably. Going back to the court scenes, the movie gives us the assumption that Doctor Kimble and his high-paid lawyer had no hard arguments against the judgment. Every piece of the given information left the public mind with no alternative aside from the guilt of a wealthy surgeon, who had committed the crime against his wife for the sake of the insurance. His escapade and the upcoming deeds, along with preserving one’s personality, would change a lot. 

Richard Kimble makes himself up, takes care of his wounds, assists the hurt prison guard more than once, and avoids causing any damage to a U.S. marshal, taking the mortal risk of jumping over the dam. In substitution of an escape as far as possible from Chicago, Richard makes his way back home. Even the shielded certainty of the Marshals in performing their mission of getting the criminal takes in water face to face with Kimble and his deeds. His improvised investigation is wholly at odds with the official sentence on Helen Kimble’s case. All while visiting the public institutions and his friends, taking chances within a hospital, Richard constantly takes the bear of danger by the tooth a hand’s width apart from being jailed or killed. Under the fact that his deeds have diverged from the expected behavior of the fugitives from justice, Richard is always in advance of his chaser, including Gerard. 

Richard unintentionally uses the investigation for Gerard to reposition his mind towards the past and current events: a means that the U.S. Marshal now strives to get wise to Kimble’s thought patterns and to shorten the distance between the chaser and the fugitive. Not so much breaking the truth with every scene; the protagonist leaves clues and orienteers, important enough to be ignored. Doctor Richard Kimble takes up еру position of a leading force rather than an escapee. Bypassing the initial roles (the U.S. Marshal and convicted felon), Richard steadily reshapes Gerard’s attitude, reaching the climax in the final scenes, when the main character saves him from Nichols. Along with that, the persecutor holds to his identity and the granted responsibilities in a scene when he shoots Richard through the bulletproof door, having had doubts about the case. Gerard’s sense of duty prevails over his deeds till the fall of the curtain, a moment of certainty with facts and Richard.  

The story’s prologue infiltrates our mind with a scene of Doctor Kimble being gently taken to a police car, a victim, and a witness at the moment. Months before the sitting of the court, the moments worth mentioning as the story ends with pretty much the same picture, yet Kimble’s image has been transformed in the eyes of the public. The mass media took full advantage of the story of a wealthy surgeon, who had brutally taken the life of one’s wife, later committed an escapade, and was to become the center of a persistent manhunt. Relatedly, even the dead-wrong of the public dispraise is to be transformed into reasonable issues against the fact of Kimble’s guilt. All while the Chicago police detectives retain stability with the initial sentence, the journalists and the general public start to pay regard to the deeds of the fugitive, far from the expected ones. Another brilliant example of breaking the public mind can be traced in a scene of unmasking Charles Nichols. In the minds of the guests, the VIP orator provokes both respect and awe until the words of Richard Kimble devastate the myth of Doctor Nichols.