THE FUGITIVE ***

If you have to make a big screen film version of a long-running television series then "The Fugitive" is the way to go. The original series ran for four years from 1963 to 1967 and is now regarded as something of a television classic. What writers Jeb Stuart and David Twohy and director Andrew Davis have done is to break almost one hundred hours of television down to a very crisp two and they have done it superbly.

By now I'm sure almost everyone knows the story of how Dr. Richard Kimble, accused of the brutal murder of his wife, though innocent, escaped from custody and is pursued by a dogged US Marshall. On TV these roles were played by David Janssen and Barry Morse and are now played by Harrison Ford and a terrific Tommy Lee Jones, who won the Oscar for his performance. The real killer, of course, is the famous, or infamous, one-armed man and Kimble is out to find him.

This is the chase film par excellence and is one of the greatest thrillers of the nineties. Ford and Jones may carry the picture but there isn't a bad performance in sight and Davis handles the virtually non-stop action superbly; it's almost one set-piece after another. An almost obscenely entertaining picture.