The Fugitive

Other mistake: When Kimble takes the elevator to the conference to confront Dr. Nichols, he presses a button, but the one beside it is the one that actually lights up. In this particular elevator, the button he pressed is the one that should have lit up.

Other mistake: When Harrison Ford is being chased in an ambulance by the police, there is a shot of police cars heading towards the waterfalls in the background. If you look closely, the water is not moving. (00:33:15)

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Suggested correction: The water IS moving, you just need to look closely.

Other mistake: When Dr. Nichols hits Dr. Kimble with a chair, look carefully. As Dr. Nichols swings the chair, it starts falling apart before it even makes contact with Harrison.

Other mistake: After Kimble has been rescued from the train wreck and unchained, he escapes, running alongside a body of water. As Gerard announces to the other officers that there's a fugitive on the loose and gives instructions, Kimble is seen running again, in a replay of the earlier shot. Not only are all the same landmarks in place, but at the end of both sequences, he moves his arm to shake off a branch that's snagged him.

Other mistake: After the train crash the news crews and sheriff are interviewing the surviving corrections officer. He boasts how heroic he was to rescue his partner from the wreckage, claiming that he was his partner and he would do the same for him. The only problem is that they are surprised when they find that same surviving corrections officer several scenes later and rush him to the hospital. Why would they be surprised to find an officer they already knew about?

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Suggested correction: The first corrections officer had been exposed as a liar and made up the story that Kimble and Copeland were dead. Nobody believed he heroically saved his partner. Everyone assumed since the partner hadn't been found right away that he died in the wreck. It never occurred to anyone that Kimble would put his own life on the line to save a guard, so actually finding the guard alive was a surprise.

BaconIsMyBFF

There is nothing formally wrong with the order of events here. The assumption is that the second officer's whereabouts are known at the time of the senior officer's story - but that is actually only an assumption. Finding the second officer would of course not be important to the main story in any way, and thus this sub-story was not explained in the movie. To word it an alternative better way, why would the senior officer make up this story of saving the second officer, if the officer had not been located yet?

The second officer's whereabouts are most certainly not known when the first officer is interviewed. The first officer is interviewed the night of the crash and the second officer is found the next morning.

BaconIsMyBFF

Other mistake: When Kimble is heading towards the dam driving the ambulance in the tunnel, his lane is empty in the wide angles, yet in the close-ups he is swerving the steering wheel violently as if there were cars ahead. This keeps changing back and forth.

Sacha

Other mistake: After we see a shot of the prison bus driving along a road, the white, balding jail guard says, "20 miles to Benard. We should be there in 40 minutes." Not long after, one of the inmates begins to foam at the mouth. The black prisoner cries, "Hey, somebody, get in here quick!" The black jail guard stands up to unlock the cage, and the white, balding guy says to him, "We're almost to the prison." This is impossible considering he just mentioned the prison was 20 miles away. (00:14:52)

Sniffeh

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Suggested correction: Almost is a relative word and compared to Chicago/Cook County, they could almost be at the prison (when flying from NYC to LAX, when you are over Utah, you are almost there even though you still have like an hour to go). But more likely (and how I have always taken it to mean), the guard didn't give two cents if these prisoners died in transport and the other guard should just sit tight because they are almost where they have to go and the prison doctors can look at him then.

Other mistake: During the St. Patrick's Day parade, the camera shows a clock that displays the temperature, which is supposedly 23°. None of the spectators or performers we see is dressed for that temperature. They would be way more bundled up than they are. Everybody is dressed for weather in the 40s or so.

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Suggested correction: 20s is nice and toasty.

Other mistake: When Kimble takes the elevator to the conference to confront Dr. Nichols, he presses a button, but the one beside it is the one that actually lights up. In this particular elevator, the button he pressed is the one that should have lit up.

More mistakes in The Fugitive

Richard Kimble: Do you remember what I told you in the tunnel?
Sam Gerard: Um, yeah. It was noisy, I think you said something like you didn't kill your wife.
Richard Kimble: Remember what you told me?
Sam Gerard: I remember you pointing my gun at me.
Richard Kimble: You said "I don't care."
Tracing tech: He's on the south side.
Sam Gerard: Yeah. Yeah, that's right, Richard. I don't care. I'm not trying to solve a puzzle here.
Richard Kimble: Well, I *am* trying to solve a puzzle.
Cosmo Renfro: Five seconds to location.
Richard Kimble: And I just found a *big* piece.

More quotes from The Fugitive

Trivia: After his escape, it shows Harrison getting on a train marked with the name "Kimball" and then in the next shot, a helicopter flies over a hotel called "Harrison".

More trivia for The Fugitive

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.

More questions & answers from The Fugitive

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