starring : tommy lee jones ( sam gerard ) , wesley snipes ( various character names ) , joe pantoliano ( cosmo renfro ) , robert downey jr . ( john royce ) , irčne jacob ( marie ) , tom wood ( noah newman ) , daniel roebuck ( biggs ) , kate nelligan ( walsh ) directed by : stuart baird , written by : john poguerated pg-13 by the mpaa for violence , gore , and strong languagei'll lay out the basics first . sam gerard , the chief deputy u . s . marshal from the fugitive ( 1993 ) , and his team of crack deputies , are back . another man has fled from the clutches of the state , and gerard must chase this new fugitive down . but what's the story this time ? why is he running ? did he do what he was accused ? if not , who did ? who's doing the cover-up ? why ? and so on . all the stuff you love from your traditional action/suspense/mystery flicks , but with better characters ( especially jones' oscar-winning gerard role ) and better action set-pieces , pushing it into the above-average fun-film range . plus , it's a warner bros . film , and everyone knows that ever since about 1994 , it's been a red-letter day any time that warner has actually released a good film . '97 was their best run in a while , what with contact , rosewood , and l . a . confidential . maybe things will look up for them this year . now then . . . i've never felt the need to adress what other critics have thought of a movie before , but this time , i'm afraid i must . it's just that this time , i've read a number of reviews with differing opinions , but many of them made various statements that left me with one vital question : what movie did these people see ? i'm not talking about disagreeing with their opinions . i'm talking things that seem to be factual , and yet , also just seem . . . well , wrong . i guess some of these could be taken as opinions . regardless , i have no idea where anyone could get these impressions . i'll just ramble them off for you , to give you an impression of what i'm getting at here . the following statements , made by a number of unrelated , anonymous film critics , appear to be nothing short of , well , false : 1 ) u . s . marshals is nothing more than a copy of the the fugitive . 
