Timothy Birdnow

I watched the movie The Fugitive last night. While it was enjoyable, I had to wonder about the scene where Richard Kimball jumps off the dam.

Kimball (Harrison Ford)is being transported to a penitentiary to be executed. He is wearing an orange jumpsuit that says "IDOC" so one must assume he's still in Illinois.

But the dam he jumps from is very high, and blocks a deep canyon. There is nothing remotely like that in northern Illinois (southern either as far as I know.)

The scene was clearly shot in a another state. We don't have anything like that in the midwest. I looked it up; it was North Carolina.

I don't know why movie makers can't do the basics, like have the guy jump off a dam in Illinois.But I do get it; they wanted scary. A thirty foot dam just doesn't have the sex appeal.

The reality is Richard Kimball would not have survived that jump. He could have survived a jump from a smaller local dam. I assume Kimball was being transfered to Stateville Corectional Center, 40 miles southwest of Chicago (Illinois repealed the death penalty in 2011 so that is no longer the case.) So I assume it was the Sulvan Lake Dam, which is less than 25 feet tall.

I am willing to suspend my disbelief,but only to a point. I hate it when someone sinks millions into a production and gets something like that wrong.

The countryside did not look like prairie, I might add. Northern Illinois is prairie, not heavy forest or mountainous.

I wish these movie makers wouldn't think the Midwest is so dull they must reinvent it.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:53 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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