Criminal
<PERSON> is absolutely correct that The Fugitive would be better if the first half of it were <PERSON>, his wife, and a lady cop all being intensely horny for each other in various permutations.
After that, he reluctantly does remake The Fugitive, but you can kind of tell he doesn't much want to. He underplays all that movie's most iconic scenes--or outright skips them--and gives <PERSON>, in the <PERSON> role, basically nothing. He's much more interested in the tortured yearning between policewoman <PERSON> (a character very much not present in the original) and <PERSON> (in the <PERSON> role). 698
The second half's best scene is the only one that's just the two of them, and it's much more in <PERSON>'s preferred lane.
It's such a stark contrast to his approach when remaking It Happened One Night, where he treated nearly every beat with reverence. He's not wrong that It Happened One Night is a better movie, but given that, why remake The Fugitive at all? Especially if you're only going to spend about forty minutes of your 2.5 hour movie doing so?
Other flaws include some disappointingly limp action beats (including the most perfunctory handling imaginable of the big jump off the dam), weak villains, and a pretty dull villain scheme motivating the action.
But this is still pretty good, owing to the strength of that (shockingly horny) first hour, that one <PERSON>/<PERSON> scene in the second (which is really the only scene after the interval that much feels like <PERSON> being <PERSON>), some great music from <PERSON>, and a very strong core three performers in <PERSON>, <PERSON>, and <PERSON>. It doesn't quite live up to the promise it seems to have early on, when you think that lovelorn (and ultimately scorned) <PERSON> is playing the <PERSON> role and adding a whole lot of interesting emotional layers and deeply personal stakes to an already proven dramatic dynamic, but alas that's not where it's going. That version of this movie might have been a classic, this one is just pretty fun. 698