In “U.S. Marshals,” Tommy Lee Jones — one of the smartest, fastest and roughest movie actors around — returns to the role that made him a major star: Chief Deputy Marshal Sam Gerard, “The Big Dog” of Chicago’s federal Marshals’ bureau. And though Jones is not the only reason to watch this mixed bag of an action spectacular, he’s certainly the best.
Just as in “The Fugitive,” where he first created Gerard — the man whom no man-on-the-run in his right mind wants running behind him — Jones galvanizes the picture. With those dark glowering eyes, clenched voice and self-kidding humor — that deceptive sense of a man operating at a level of tension, awareness and lightly veiled aggression that can explode to terrifying levels at any second — Jones gives the role, and the film, a lacerating edge and authority. His Gerard is so convincingly tough and brainy, and believably volatile, that he carries the movie over the script’s obvious sequel-spinoff maneuvers and blatant parallels with its predecessor.
Unfortunately, there are lots of those: old ploys that don’t always make new sense. “U.S. Marshals” is slick, fast, violent and flashy. Perhaps because the director (Stuart Baird of “Executive Decision”) was once an editor, it moves like a rocket, explodes with all the usual techno-tricks. “U.S. Marshals” has an unusually good cinematographer (Andrzej Bartkowiak, a master at city shots) and score (Jerry Goldsmith). And a fine cast: not just Jones, but Wesley Snipes as the new fugitive, Irene Jacob as Mark’s girlfriend, Kate Nelligan as Gerard’s boss and Robert Downey Jr. — in another of his probationary performances — as a newcomer to Gerard’s team: a know-it-all, over-dressed government agent named John Royce.
But, partly because the focus has shifted so decisively to Gerard, rather than remaining on the man he’s chasing, “U.S. Marshals” lacks that core of tension, terror and anguish “The Fugitive” had. There, we were convinced from the beginning of Dr. Richard Kimble’s innocence. (And from before that, if we knew the ’60s TV series on which the movie was based.) Here, partly from a conscious strategy to keep the audience off balance, we’re not quite sure whether Snipes’ Mark Sheridan — who starts off with a few aliases — is guilty or not.
Snipes’ willingness to play villains on occasion contributes to the uncertainty. Here, he makes Mark opaque, hard to read. At first, we see him as a Chicago truck driver who gets unlucky: surviving a horrendous crash only to find himself under arrest when his fingerprints turn up on a warrant for a double murder in New York City. Sent on a transport to Memphis with a planeful of manacled and dangerous fellow prisoners, Mark finds himself sharing a ride with Gerard’s latest catch and Gerard himself, who is making the trip to do penance for opening up a 27-stitch cut on his suspect’s head during the arrest.
The plane ride is this movie’s equivalent of the spectacular van-train crash in “The Fugitive”: not as effective but more baroque, weird. When the prisoners are ferried out after the crash, Mark is missing, “The Big Dog” and his bunch are on the case.
Soon, the new boy shows up: Downey’s spiffy agent Royce, at first seemingly another cocky New Yorker who thinks he’s way sharper than the Chicago rubes. Assigned to Gerard’s unit by two ill-mannered fellow agents because Mark’s alleged murder victims were also agents (and buddies of Royce), Royce stares insolently. Gerard acts mean. And Mark runs through swamps and city streets, pausing periodically to call Marie back in Chicago. Corpses start piling up, most of them courtesy of poker-faced Chinese assassin and UN cultural delegate Chen (Michael Paul Chan), who, while claiming diplomatic immunity, has been popping people right and left.
Obviously some kind of international mess is going on. But where? And how? The chase carries us through Chicago, Kentucky, Tennessee and over to New York at such a hopped up clip that it’s not always easy to tell where you are, however familiar the buildings or trees.
Most movie sequels (including “Scream 2”) severely diminish their own credibility by improbably repeating the scenes from the original movie that made it a success. Though “U.S. Marshals” has a new writer, director and even a new fugitive, that’s the road it takes. Some of the repetition is welcome: Gerard’s raffish, slightly funky team is back (Joe Pantoliano, Tom Wood, Dan Roebuck and, new this time, Latanya Richardson a k a Mrs. Samuel Jackson). Some of the repetition is exciting but strained. And director Baird, whose last job was the ludicrous “Executive Decision,” succeeds here simply because the project seems commercially foolproof, if not unassailably logical.
Through it all, what ties the movie together is Jones’ incendiary presence. One of the reasons he’s so good at playing The Big Dog — the super-competent felon-catcher who thinks he’s sharper than everyone around him — is that Jones is sharper. Despite coming from a hardscrabble Texas background, he’s a cum laude Harvard English graduate who was also an all-conference and All Big East football guard. It’s easy for him to convey a mind in hyper-drive, while most everyone around him is idling — because that’s the case in real life.
Gerard, in “The Fugitive” was a villain-antagonist who gradually became a hero: a cop so keen-minded and gutsy that he wound up believing in the man he was chasing. Here, we accept Gerard as good guy from the get-go. It’s Mark we wonder about. And Royce. That’s a potentially clever departure, but it doesn’t always work. There are huge holes in the movie’s narrative that suggest wholesale cutting or an attempt to deliberately confuse us. And, because it feels better to be tricked than confused, the movie gets slightly annoying. “The Fugitive” built to a powerful climax, even if the final chase did get a little silly. “U.S. Marshals” simply drags us from cliffhanger to cliffhanger. Despite the enormous advantage of Jones at the wheel, it’s just another ride. And its pleasures are fugitive.
”U.S. MARSHALS”
(star) (star) 1/2
Directed by Stuart Baird; written by John Pogue; photographed by Andrzej Bartkowiak; edited by Terry Rawlings; production designed by Maher Ahmad; music by Jerry Goldsmith; produced by Arnold and Anne Kopelson. A Warner Bros. release; opens Friday. Running time: 2:13. MPAA rating: PG-13.
THE CAST
Chief Deputy Marshal
Sam Gerard …………….. Tommy Lee Jones
Mark Sheridan ………….. Wesley Snipes
John Royce …………….. Robert Downey Jr.
U.S. Marshal Walsh ……… Kate Nelligan
Deputy Marshal Renfro …… Joe Pantoliano
Marie …………………. Irene Jacob
