One-Shot Wednesday

In The Fugitive (1993), Harrison Ford plays Dr. Richard Kimble, a Chicago surgeon wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. Kimble escapes custody and sets out to prove his innocence while being relentlessly pursued by U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard, played by Tommy Lee Jones.

Filmed in iconic Chicago locations like City Hall, Daley Plaza, and (the former) Cook County Hospital, as well as rural areas in North Carolina, The Fugitive combines suspense with a vivid sense of place: that place, of course, Chicago.

The above screenshot is a close-up of a book called Atlas of Limb Prosthetics: Surgical and Prosthetic Principles by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

In this scene, Dr. Kimble has rented an apartment from a Polish woman and her son (see clip below). Here, Kimble plans to hide from the police while researching the one-armed man that, he believes, killed his wife. In this shot, Kimble is asleep with the medical book he's been reading resting on his chest.

In The Fugitive, the book Atlas of Limb Prosthetics functions as a fictional prop. That said, it is an actual book, first published in 1981, aimed at orthopaedic surgeons.

Four editions of the book have been published since 1981, the most recent in 2023. The prop department for The Fugitive secured the most recent edition at the time, the second (1992), for Harrison Ford to hold while his character naps.