Ratings: IMDB — 6.5/10, Rotten Tomatoes — 27%, ME — 45%
Sam Gerard: [looking at Royce's Gun] Got a back-up weapon?
John Royce: Never had the need.
Sam Gerard: Get one.
[hands back Royce's gun]
Sam Gerard: Keep it in your suit unless I tell you to take it out. Get yourself a Glock and lose that nickel-plated sissy pistol.
Robert Downey, Jr. as John Royce and Tommy Lee Jones as Sam Gerard.
Trivia (From IMDB):
For the scene where Sheridan (Wesley Snipes) escapes by swinging onto a moving train, which was shot in East Harlem in New York, stuntman Clay Donahue Fontenot literally performed the stunt as it is seen in the film - he swung from the building on a 70 foot long reinforced cable and landed on the roof of a train station alongside a passing train. Because of the logistics of the scene, no safety net or airbag could be used, making it a one time only shot. It took ten weeks to plan the shot, and eight hours to set it up. It lasts for seven seconds in the film.
For shooting the scenes on the plane, director Stuart Baird and production designer Maher Ahmad looked at real prisoner transfer planes but were disappointed to find that they looked just like regular planes. As such, they came up with the design of the plane seen in the film - the feet restraints, the cage door, the mechanical locking system, the open toilet etc.
Towards the end of the production shoot, the cast and crew had to wait days without filming waiting for Robert Downey Jr. to show up and finish the movie. The only scenes left to shoot were the hospital scenes that He was in and there was no way to shoot without him there. He finally did show up and finish his scenes apparently without the need for an explanation or an apology to those who waited...
All of the interiors of the Marshal's offices were shot on the 20th floor of 444 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, which was the exact same location as was used for shooting the interiors of the offices in The Fugitive (1993); even the same floor was used.
When Sheridan (Wesley Snipes) rents his apartment across from the UN, he tells the landlord "It's perfect." This is the exact same line used by Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) when he rents an apartment in The Fugitive (1993).
The pilot of the 727 is played by Steve King, a real life pilot.
US Marshals has a similar plot to The Fugitive. Both have innocent fugitives, crashed transportation vehicles, scheming perpetrators and the fugitives are exonerated at the end among many other parallels. Furthermore, both US Marshals and The Fugitive feature Tommy Lee Jones as one and the same character Samuel Gerard.
The jet plane that was crashed in U.S. Marshals (1998) is now located in a flooded rock quarry near Mermet, Illinois. The quarry is a dive park for scuba divers.
In the original script, Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) was introduced dressed up as a priest. Director Stuart Baird and costume designer Louise Frogley didn't find this interesting enough, so they came up with the idea of the chicken outfit.
For shooting the scene of the airplane crash, the production leased a real Boeing 727 from a Vegas casino owner, purchased two fuselages for the post-crash scenes and built a 1,000 pound model for the actual moment of impact. The scene of the crash was shot on a miniature road 1,200 feet long, with the 1000-pound model plane moving at 60 miles per hour. Because it was a one shot only situation, it was filmed by 9 cameras. The sequence was primarily directed by visual effects supervisor Peter Donen, and in total, the entire scene took 75 people 6 months to bring it all together.
Robert Downey Jr. did not enjoy working on the production, and in an interview shortly after its release, he said of the film "it's possibly the worst action movie of all time, and that's just not good for the maintenance of a good spiritual condition. You've had a traumatic year, you've been practically suicidal- what do you think would be really healing for you? How about like twelve weeks of running around as Johnny Handgun? I think that if you talk to a spirit guide, they would say, 'That'll kill you.' I thought maybe there was something I was missing, and what I really needed to do was to be in one of those films that I love taking my kid to. But it wound up being really depressing. I'd rather wake up in jail for a TB test than have to wake up another morning knowing I'm going to the set of U.S. Marshals."
In the bar scene at the beginning of the movie, the U.S. Marshal crew is watching themselves on TV. The reporter throws it back to "Lester", better known now as NBC's Lester Holt who was at that time the anchor at Chicago's WBBM. Lester Holt was also in the The Fugitive (1993), the movie that this is a sequel to.
Just one year prior to acting in this film, Wesley Snipes (Sheridan) and Robert Downey Jr. (Royce) portrayed best friends in the film "One Night Stand."
For the scene where the marshals are following Chen (Michael Paul Chan) over 700 extras were used.
The cemetery scene, which is clearly set in New York in the film, and is also referred to as "Queens Hill Cemetery" by Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) on his radio, is actually Bohemian Cemetery in Chicago.
Samuel L. Jackson was originally cast as Mark Sheridan.
Special Agent John Royce's "sissy nickel pistol" is a Taurus PT945 .45 caliber handgun.
The swamp scenes were shot on Reelfoot Lake in northwest Tennessee, in the same location as was used for Raintree County (1957) and In the Heat of the Night (1967).
The scenes of the fuselage in the water were shot in the Ohio River, Illinois, whilst all the interiors of the plane were shot on stage in Chicago, with the fuselage rigged to a complex gimbal system so as to simulate the jolting motion of the crash. For the scenes where the plane is upside-down and sinking into the water, the scene was shot in the real upside-down fuselage, which could be submerged in a tank.
Most of the exterior scenes in New York were shot in the business district of Chicago, as the production couldn't get permission to shut down the streets in New York.
Jones, Downey, Pantoliano, and Snipes all would later appear in Marvel films: Captain America The First Avenger, Iron Man trilogy and Avengers, Daredevil, and the Blade trilogy respectively.
Towards the end of the movie, Gerard and Royce follow Sheridan to the Bayonne docks in New Jersey. Afterwards they are in a unnamed hospital however the police officer outside Sheridan's room is wearing an actual Bayonne Police Department patch on his shoulder.
Wesley Snipes did Blade 2 four years later, the same year Stuart Baird did Star Trek Nemesis. In those two movies, actor Ron Perlman appears as the antagonist.
Cast members Joe Pantoliano and Michael Paul Chan previously appeared in the movie, The Goonies (1985).
Cast members Tommy Lee Jones and Michael Paul Chan also appeared in the movie, Batman Forever (1995).
Possibly an in-joke from the filmmakers, one of the pilots of the plane strongly resembles Harrison Ford, who coincidentally starred in The Fugitive, of which this movie is a sequel.
Dick Beebe wrote an uncredited draft of the script.
Wesley Snipes previously starred in The Fan (1996), which featured actor John Leguizamo as his agent. This film's director Stuart Baird directed Leguizamo in "Executive Decision" the same year.
Spoilers —
The scene where Newman (Tom Wood) is killed was edited two ways: one way which showed Royce (Robert Downey Jr.) shooting him, the other which kept it ambiguous as to whether it was Royce or Sheridan (Wesley Snipes) who shot him. The film was previewed both ways, but audiences much preferred the version which showed Royce as the killer.
Due to the unavoidable major key plot nature of the Plane Crash sequence, this film is likely to be withdrawn from broadcast, depending on obvious relevant events in the news.
Trivia from IMDB, photo from Google.
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