THE FUGITIVE
by Paul Rosenblum

Dr. Richard Kimble reincarnated just to be chased all over again.

As a famous baseball player once said: It's deja vu all over again.

I have loathed writing this review since I heard that The Fugitive is coming back to network TV. Probably every fan's favorite, except for me. I just don't see the point of remaking a television series as a big budgeted movie and then re-remaking the movie back to a TV series. Even if you weren't alive back in the 1960's to see the original, it has been on TV in repeats for years, most recently on TV Land. One can purchase the last two episodes of the original TV series to see David Janssen's "Richard Kimble" finally face the one-armed man and win the fight and hand him over to Lt. Girard (sorry to give it away, but you've had your chance to watch it for the last 30 years).

I don't like remakes. "Mission: Impossible," the TV series, was remade into another TV series about ten years ago, then remade into a theatrical film along with others such as A Perfect Murder (the remake of the Alfred Hitchcock film Dial M For Murder - after that was remade with the same name about 4 times) - and now... Ta Da!...The Fugitive. I admit I went into it knowing that I just wouldn't like it -- even before the first frame (oh, sorry - "video particle") hit my TV screen.

I expected a Roy Huggins (Starsky and Hutch, and The Rockford Files) production to be just another action series, but I was pleasantly surprised. You will not read too many positive reviews from this writer - so enjoy this one. This time the character of Lt. Girard is a black police officer (a very distant relative of the original?), and the train that crashed in the original series is now a police transport. Tim Daley's "Dr. Richard Kimble" isn't nearly as boring and busy-bodyish as David Janssen's character was. But hey - the one-armed man still has only one arm!

And this Dr. Kimble stumbles into things and shows more emotion than Janssen"s "Kimble" ever did. The production values, including the photography and the soundtrack, reveal a high quality unusual in a television production (but is that saying much?).

I do, of course, have a few nit-picks with this series. After Richard Kimble escaps, he somehow had enough money to buy clothes, a backpack and a hotel room. Did he carry his ATM card to jail? True, he got a construction job which paid cash, but he had to have money before that. And with all of the technology available to him, Lt. Girard could have stopped all of Kimble's credit cards and ATM bank cards instantly. One man running, the whole police force after him with today's hi-tech computers, and they can't catch him? Let him come to NYC for the chase - Giulliani will send New York's Finest after him and he'll be caught in no time!

Okay, okay...I'm getting carried away. It's only a TV show. I need to let it go and just enjoy the thing. Yes, sir, I just need to sit down, one arm tied behind my back, and tune in to the new trials and the tribulations of the Dr. Richard Kimble: The (new) Fugitive.

Paul Rosenblum is a writer living in New York City.

Got a problem? Email Paul at filmmonthly@hotmail.com