There was no finished script or even an ending and a key cast member became fatally ill during the production. Three decades after the release of the landmark Hollywood thriller, the cast and crew look back at the film’s chaotic creation and reflect on the legacy of the instant classic that almost fell apart
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert sat down at the end of 1993 to pick their 10 favorite movies of the year, they largely selected prestige, Oscar-bait films like The Piano, The Age of Innocence, The Joy Luck Club, and Schindler’s List.
Based on a long-running — and slyly subversive — TV show from the Sixties, the film grabs you right from the opening scene where Ford’s character, Richard Kimble, a respected doctor falsely accused of murdering his wife, escapes from police custody when his prison bus collides with a freight train.
Throughout the four-season run of the show, Kimble attempts to track down a one-armed man he saw commit the crime, while being pursued by dogged police detective Philip Gerard (played by Barry Morse).
And although much of his work didn’t make it onto the screen, it was his idea to turn a simple train derailment, as seen on the Sixties television show, into a violent shootout on a prison bus that crashes and collides with an oncoming locomotive.
They fleshed out the cast by hiring Richard Jordan as the evil Dr. Charles Nichols, Greek-American character actor Andreas Katsulas as Fredrick “The One-Armed Man” Sykes, a diverse crew of U.S. marshals (more on them later), and Julianne Moore as Dr. Anne Eastman.
Caldwell was asked to return as well, but it conflicted with her commitment to the Neil Simon Broadway play “Proposals.” Davis was also busy directing the Michael Douglas-Gwenyth Paltrow film “A Perfect Murder.” He was replaced by Stuart Baird.
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