If one were to describe the main hero of the novel (The Avenger), one would call him a superhero of sorts. This is a person who is able to plan superbly, fight easily, and fulfill missions. Frederick Forsyth writes thrillers (he ran into similar problems that others did when the Cold war ended, and numerous plots between the East and the West could not be spun). Forysth is famous for detailed descriptions of the elements of his stories, based on a lot of research. He writes about people and jobs that we do not know too much about in detail, such as big businessmen, spies, mercenaries, gangsters, politicians, senior government officials, etc. And of course, there is a twist always there in the tail, there will be something in the end that is surprising.

The Avenger is basically the story about this lawyer in his 50′s, who runs triathlons to keep in shape. He is Colin Dexter, a Vietnam War veteran who was involved in one of the most dangerous missions. Described in great detail, the mission was part of a group called the ‘Tunnel Rats’ who climb into the massive underground tunnels dug by the VietCong (with many traps and chances of getting killed very high). He and his commanding officer survive the war, although a large number of their unit does not.
Colin now has a new mission, something that he got into once his family disintegrated after his daughter got involved with Latino gang members and was killed after being forced into prostitution. He tracked down the gang members and killed them one by one, although his wife died due to the pain. He is now a small and unknown lawyer, but is also contactable as a man called ‘The Avenger’. He will, for a fee, find a person from anywhere and get him back to the US for trail.
He has been put onto a mission where a volunteer US young man served in the Bosnian war, and then went missing. The man’s grandfather is an extremely rich man, and hires The Avenger to find out what went wrong, and if somebody was involved, to get him for justice. And then starts the hunt, the man leading the mission in Bosnia was a sociopath called Zoran Zilic, a hitman for the Serbs, who moved out of there when that war ended and became an asset for a faction within the CIA who want to use him to get an upcoming terrorist, Osama Bin Laden (this happened before the September 11, 2001, attack). Colin has to stay a step ahead of Zoran and the CIA team that wants to stop him. Can he do this in time ?

A fast paced action movie, with a fair amount of drama, a wrong court decision, and the need to get revenge (and clear his name) were some of the parts that made The Fugitive a very famous and commercially successful movie. The movie was nominated for a clutch of Oscars, and also earned more than $500 million worldwide. It helped that it starred 2 famous actors in the person of Harrison Ford (very famous for Star Wars and Indiana Jones), and Tommy Lee Jones. The movie also got good reviews from critics, making it really successful (it is not always seen for a movie to be both commercially successful and earn praise from critics).
The movie was released in 1993, and was based on a television series that aired on ABC between 1963 and 1967. The series ran for 4 years (interestingly, the first 3 seasons were in black and white, and the fourth season was in color). The movie has the same premise, where a doctor is charged for the murder of his wife, and escapes in order to prove his innocence.

The movie has principally 2 characters – Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble, and Tommy Lee Jones as Deputy United States Marshal Samuel Gerard. Dr. Kimble has been charged for the murder of his wife, based on the fact that his wife made a call to 911 which apparently led to Dr. Kimble being blamed for the murder. In addition, there was no evidence to back the claim of Dr. Kimble that a man with an artificial hand was responsible for the murder (there were no signs of somebody breaking into the house, there were no other fingerprints on the gun). Dr. Kimble was charged for murder, and convicted by a jury, sentenced to die.
However, on the way to prison in a bus (along with other convicts), there is a disturbance inside the bus that causes the bus to fall onto the path of an oncoming train. In the disturbance. Dr. Kimble manages to run away and is now being pursued by the United States Marshal service, led by officer Samuel Gerard. Kimble manages to change out of his prison uniform, shave, and alter his appearance, but Gerard is soon on the chase, and manages to corner him inside a storm drain inside a dam. The only option for Kimble to survive is by jumping into the flow of water falling from the dam, and he does so in a fairly spectacular shot.
Now, Kimble is on a mission to find people who have received a prosthetic arm, while striving to be hidden from the police who is chasing him. In the middle of this, while hidden in a hospital, he even saves a boy by altering the diagnosis and sending him to emergency surgery. Kimble even heads to the jail to try to find the one-armed man, but is not able to find him. He eventually gets into the home of a former police office called Frederick Sykes (Katsulas). Sykes was there in Kimble’s list since he had received a prosthetic arm. It is in Sykes’s home that Kimble finds evidence of what could have caused the attacks at Kimble’s home, as well as the involvement of somebody close to Kimble. Can Kimble save himself from the police, and expose the involvement of others ?

The Fugitive was nominated for 7 Oscars:
Won: Best Supporting Actor – Tommy Lee Jones
Best Picture (lost to Schindler’s List)
Best Cinematography (lost to Schindler’s List)
Best Sound Effects Editing (lost to Jurassic Park)
Best Film Editing (lost to Schindler’s List)
Best Original Music Score (lost to Schindler’s List)
Best Sound (lost to Jurassic Park)

The title above may seem like it is describing a man fighting for justice for himself, but in fact, the story is about a man fighting to get proper justice for an accused. In the United States, decisions for criminal cases are supposed to be evaluated by a jury made up of fellow citizens, who listen to the evidence, and its presentation by the prosecutors and by the defense; in the end, the jury has to reach a verdict that the judge follows. The movie hinges on the fact that for serious crimes, the verdict of the 12 member jury has to be unanimous, and if even one juror objects and does not agree to a unanimous verdict, the jury is called a hung trail, with the case being declared as a mistrial. There is pressure on the minority jury members to reach a verdict, else the jury has to sit for as long as it takes to reach a verdict; it is only if the foreman reaches a decision that a unanimous verdict cannot be reached, does the jury get dismissed.

The movie is about the murder trial of a teenager from poor and disturbed circumstances, who is accused of killing his father. The presentation of evidence is over, the lawyers have made their arguments, and the jury is now deliberating on the judgment. They have been instructed by the judge that they need to reach a verdict of whether the defendant is guilty of murder or not, and if they do reach a verdict of guilty, then the defendant will be sentenced to a mandatory sentence of death.
When a quick vote is taken, it is found that 11 of the jurors (all 12 are white men) are in favor of a death sentence, only Juror # 8 (Henry Fonda) does not vote guilty. In fact, Henry Fonda is not sure about the guilty or not, but believes that some of the evidence presented is circumstantial, and that the jurors must do a fair deliberation before judging the accused to be guilty (and sending him to his death). And thus, you have an excellent movie where you can see the mood of the jury (and individual jurors), as they go through the evidence, deliberate, and review their vote. Jurors change their votes depending on the evidence they hear during the discussion, with a few of them reversing their votes, and one of them voting guilty only because he is bigoted. Eventually, all of them change their vote to Not Guilty.
The movie was based almost entirely in one room, through the deliberations by the jury members, excepting for a couple of scenes in a washroom, and beginning and closing scenes on the steps of the courtroom. The movie did not so well commercially, but has now been recognized as a classic movie, with the role of Juror # 8 being one of the top 50 heroes.

It is very rare that an American President gets impeached, and leaving aside the case of Bill Clinton (who was almost thrown out for lying about Monica Lewinsky), Richard Nixon was the US President who would most certainly have been the one who was impeached if he had not resigned. As it is, at the of his resignation, he was a most polarizing figure in the nation, one who a large section of the population hated, and whose own men had started to resign rather than follow through on his orders.
This was a movie that was hard to make. Oliver Stone had 2 other projects in mind, but they fell through, and he then decided to make a biopic about the Former President, and it gained impetus since Nixon had died in 1994. The studio was hesitant in making the movie (commercially, they were justified in the end since the movie never made its budget in its hall releases), and given that the character being portrayed was one who was almost drummed out from the Presidency, there was always going to be a set of people who would not be happy with the scenes from the movie. And so it proved, since Nixon’s family heavily criticized the movie, and many critics also panned the movie (and as always, some other critics praised the movie).

The movie was nominated for 5 Oscars,
Best Actor in a Leading Role (Anthony Hopkins),
Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Joan Allen),
Best Music,
Original Dramatic Score and Best Writing,
Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen

Richard Nixon was a complex personality. He did a lot for the United States, it was in his terms that the United States finally withdrew from the mess in Vietnam (although he also tried to succeed militarily, but finally gave up that strategy as flawed), he was the proponent of the immensely strategic opening up to China, it was during his term that a lot of the civil rights desegregation was enforced and the US became a lot less racially separated, he was the President under whom all the successful lunar missions took place. And yet, he was the President who was finally done under due to the arrogance of trying to believe that he was above the law when his involvement in the efforts to break-into the Democratic 1972 convention and then to try and brazen his way out of the investigations into the same incident. He eventually quit when it was clear that he was frozen out. He did a lot more after he resigned in terms of becoming a respected elder statesman, but in the end, Richard Nixon will be remembered for Watergate, the only President of the United States who resigned. And Anthony Hopkins did a great portrayal of this role.