The Fugitive / US Marshals

The Fugitive
Debut: 1993
Director: Andrew Davis
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Harrison Ford

US Marshals
Debut: 1998
Director: Stuart Baird
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Wesley Snipes, Robert Downey Jr.


I'm doing these together because they weren't that different. I enjoyed the action days of the 1990s. Really, I did. I love lots of action movies that didn't have the greatest plots, but I will say they did action right back then. Now the effects are so ridiculous and normally pull away too much from what's going on in the movie. And maybe that's why action movies just aren't making it.
Anyways, both movies had the same basic plot - someone is supposed to go to prison for a crime they didn't commit, and Tommy Lee Jones (in both) is trying to track down the fugitive, only to find out that someone else did it.
Firstly, the Fugitive was way too long. I started watching it thinking, hey, I got some time to kill. But I was waiting to take a nap, and after a while I was getting a little sick of it. The main reason I rented this movie was because we had talked about the Sam Sheppard case in a law class of mine.
Action movies have a tough challenge of balancing the action with the story. Not many can sit through mind-numbing action, myself included. I did enjoy Jones' character, though, and I think the sequel wasn't half bad. I would say that it was what I like in action movies, even though both probably could have been shorter and the plots could have been a little stronger.