Opening Narration quotes from The Fugitive

Occasionally, a fugitive must make contact with reality to escape the loneliness of flight, to preserve his sanity. For Richard Kimble, contact with reality consists of an occasional telephone conversation with his sister. Tonight's call, however, could mean a great deal more.

High Desert Inn. Sixty-two miles from the town of Reeseburg, Arizona. It's a vacation spot for the very rich. Tycoons and statesmen come to spend long weekends here, relaxing incommunicado. For one man, depleted by the terrible pace of running for his life, it is a vital oasis, a needed place to pause and recoup his energy -- and hope.

He used to be a doctor of medicine. He's a chauffeur now, driving his employer home to the small Midwestern town where he was born. Home -- for the man at the wheel, it is only a word, because there is no home for him. Not now, because he's Richard Kimble, a fugitive.

The ad in the newspaper reads Wanted: Someone to drive. For a fugitive anxious to move on, it is apparently an ideal answer. Apparently.

Briar County, Colorado, where a man runs in desperation before the guns and dogs of a sheriff's posse closing in for the kill. A move in the wrong direction, a broken stride, a waste of precious seconds in looking back -- these are what can cost Richard Kimble his life.

There is a point beyond which a man cannot push himself, a final defeat of the spirit that cannot be overcome. If it is to end for the running man, this is the way it will be. It is two a.m. in the city, and Richard Kimble, doctor of medicine, moves to the start of another working day. To those with no past and little future, the city only offers the most menial of labors, those designed to provide nothing more than day-to-day survival. But to Richard Kimble, kitchen helper in an all-night diner, survival for even a day has come to be enough.

A police dragnet, a bus accident, and an ironic fate have brought together two people on a lonely country road. The woman, blinded in the accident, is unaware that the man beside her is Richard Kimble. And neither is aware that the other is fleeing from the obsession of Lieutenant Philip Gerard, hunter of the man, husband of the woman.

Tractor, New Jersey -- a small industrial town where a passerby has summoned the police to a mugging in a dirty alley. But this senseless beating is about to take on far more significance to a man not even witness to it -- a man named Richard Kimble.

For every acquaintance he makes, a man reveals a different face, a different identity. To the people of this Midwestern city, this man is John Evans, itinerant laborer. To those who know him better, he is Dr. Richard Kimble, convicted murderer.

In a civilized society, a network of laws protects man against his own brutality. But for Richard Kimble, living outside the law, the civilized world has become a jungle. His only protection is his animal instinct, his will to survive. But always there is the hunter, even in Drover City, Montana.

A man's image can be shaped by society's opinion of him. A fugitive must ask himself then, how long can a running man hold out against that opinion? How many miles, how many accusations before he becomes what society has labeled him?

For a fugitive, there is no rest from the past and no safety in the present. Even here, in the remote village of Small Groves, Wyoming, the most ordinary day may explode in his face. Rumors that Richard Kimble had been seen in the city of Casper have been relayed to every law enforcement agency in this corner of the state.

No matter how far a man may run, he cannot escape the emotional ties that bind him to his past. So Richard Kimble finds himself drawn to the factory town of Hempstead Mills. The reason: the chance of a small item in the local newspaper.

The days of a fugitive run together as one, the fear and desperation unrelieved by the sounds of laughter. But Richard Kimble, now using the name Nick Philips, will find that a man may laugh only to escape the terror of silence.

As a doctor, he had dedicated himself to the preservation of life. Now a fugitive, the life he must preserve is his own. Richard Kimble's safety depends on knowing where the enemy is -- and who.