Film

Three Fugitives (1989)

Director: Francis Veber

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Adapted by Weber from his own French movie (Les Fugitifs, 1986), this robust, often very funny farce casts Nolte and Short as chalk-and-cheese bank robbers thrown together by ludicrous coincidence. Released after five years in the slammer for armed robbery, Nolte is greeted by the cop (Jones) who put him away, and who promises to do so again. Caught up in an inept hold-up attempt by Short, Nolte is taken hostage, then mistakenly presumed to be the perpetrator of the crime. Forced to assume that role in order to escape, hard man Nolte reveals a softer side when he learns that Short only pulled the job in order to pay for special schooling for his mute six-year-old daughter (Doroff). Some sentimentality creeps in around the angelic child; but making excellent use of Nolte's controlled toughness and Short's hysterical freneticism, Weber plays the comic action hard and fast, grounding the humour in believable reality that has spiralled out of control (one hilarious scene sees Nolte having a gunshot wound treated by a senile veterinarian who thinks he's a dog).

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