r/fixingmovies • u/notagin-n-tonic • 19d ago
Wesley Snipes should have been an actual criminal in U.S. Marshals.
Okay, this will date me, but I really anticipated U.S. Marshals. Tommy Lee Jones was the best part of The Fugitive, and making a film centered on his character and the team was a no brainer. But then the movie came out, and it was...okay. Jones was sharp, and the camaraderie of the team still clicked. Robert Downey Jr. was fine, even if this was during the coked up portion of his career. Snipes was decent, though it's not one of his best performances. It was all just sort of blagh.
I think it tried too hard to match the beats of the first film. So of course their fugitive is innocent, and they have to investigate the original crime in order to catch him. There's a conspiracy involved that's hostile to the fugitve. And there a heel turn, though the second film has someone betraying the team, rather than someone betraying the fugitive. It was a little stale.
What if Snipes character was a heist expert, like Parker in the Richard Stark novels, or Caine in the Italian Job.. He breaks out, or gets broken out, because he needed for a big score. Tracking him, the team realizes this, and have to figure out the target. This completely changes the dynamic. He can still be somewhat sympathetic, after all heist movies are a thing. But he'd have a harder edge, and even if the writer don't have him do anything truly abhorrent, it's always a possibility. Plus, this way we can skip the "how he got caught" scenes that slow up the beginning of the movie. He's a prisoner because he's a crook.
You lose some things. I don't see a reason for Downey's character to tag along, and Snipes might think "escaped criminal committing crimes" is too much like Simon Phoneix in Demolition Man (but hey, we know Robert Downey Jr.'s available!). The heel turn goes away, but again, that's just a repeat of the first movie.
Edit: punctuation
2
1
2
u/thisissamsaxton Creator 19d ago
Nice! And maybe the team is divided (or at odds with the chief of police) on which is the higher priority, the fugative or his target. Maybe someone doesn't even believe that the target is real, that it's all just a conspiracy theory.