Deputy
Marshal Noah Newman
The Most Underrated Character in
Fiction
Deputy
U.S. Marshal Noah Woodrow Newman is the most underrated character in
fiction. Deputy Newman, played by Tom
Wood, is a character in the classic film The
Fugitive (1993) starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, and the sequel U.S. Marshals (1998) starring Tommy Lee
Jones, Wesley Snipes, and Robert Downey Jr.
I found Newman appealing the first time I saw The Fugitive and U.S.
Marshals, but the more times I watch them, I find him not only likeable,
but quite the ridiculously awesome person.
Tommy
Lee Jones’s character, Samuel Gerard, is tracking a fugitive in each of the two
movies. Sam has four other cops in his
entourage: Robert Biggs, Cosmo Renfro, Erin Poole (in The Fugitive, replaced by Savannah Cooper in U.S. Marshals), and Noah Newman.
In The Fugitive, Newman is the
rookie of the bunch, but in U.S. Marshals,
he’s more of Sam’s right hand man. He
matures so much between the two movies, he learns to take his job more
seriously, and he becomes a rather BA cop as well as a really sweet person.
Newman is humble and teachable, but not weak. He knows he’s not always right; he knows he’s
not perfect. Tom Wood told me, “I
decided to approach Newman as the newbie who wasn’t afraid to question things,
even though he was a new guy. This led
to a more interesting dynamic between Tommy Lee Jones’s character and Newman,
since Newman was able to create some challenge and doubt for such a surefire
character as Gerard.” In The Fugitive he has an intriguing scene (director
Andrew Davis’s favorite scene) with Sam where he criticizes Sam’s tactics
(because they put his life in danger), but in the end concedes Sam’s point and is
willing to trust his word. Many men are
too proud to do this, but not Noah Newman.
Throughout
both movies, Newman is hardworking. Sam
is always ordering him around and Newman just hops on every job he is given. Newman is a servant; when the team is doing
something and somebody has to do the unpleasant job, he does it. He carries the bags, he holds the flashlight,
he sits in the hotel security office while everyone else is having fun chasing
down the fugitive. He makes
sacrifices. He goes through a lot; in The Fugitive he gets taken hostage and
almost gets his brains blown out. But
still he keeps going on, getting better and making bigger and bigger sacrifices
until finally in U.S. Marshals he
makes the ultimate sacrifice.
Newman
cares when others don’t. Towards the
beginning of U.S. Marshals, Sam gets
in this epic plane crash and his team comes to meet him at this little corner
store/restaurant in Kentucky. Cosmo,
Biggs, Cooper, and Newman all hop out of the Suburban (Newman carrying all
their stuff, of course), and the other three are bickering among themselves,
and Newman is the only one who asks Sam how he is!
If
someone handed you a photograph and said, “I want you to find out who this guy
is. Find out his name, his age, his
weight, his social security number, his location, relatives, pets, everything,”
would you be able to do it? Noah Newman
did. In The Fugitive, he has a picture of a man with these instructions
from Sam, and he finds out the man’s name (Dr. Lentz), where he worked, that he
is dead, when he died, who he knew, and what he was involved in. Newman also discovers that Dr. Richard Kimble
(the fugitive they have been tailing) was at Chicago Memorial Hospital just
earlier that day to pick up liver samples.
This information is vitally important to finding Kimble and solving the
mystery. When Newman calls Sam to
report, Sam says, “Well done, young man,” to which Newman simply replies, “My
pleasure, Sam.” Without Newman, The Fugitive may have ended tragically.
Probably
my favorite scene in either The Fugitive or
U.S. Marshals is the first scene in U.S. Marshals with Tommy Lee Jones and
crew. They’re doing a raid on a house
and arresting two brothers (whose big-haired girlfriends try to defend them
with knives and high-heeled shoes) and Newman is holding one of the brothers at
gunpoint. A baby starts to cry in the
other room. The man says, “My baby’s
crying; I need to go check on my baby,” but Newman says, “Stay where you
are.” The man starts to move into the
other room. “I’m just going to check on
my baby.” Newman again and again
commands him to stand still; when the man starts to reach into the crib, Newman
shoots him. Sam immediately rushes into
the room, where he finds Newman holding the man (who is still alive, but on the
floor) at gunpoint with one hand and comforting the baby with the other. Once Sam has his gun on the man on the floor,
Newman holsters his and picks up the baby, who immediately stops crying. Then Sam discovers a shotgun hidden in the crib,
so Newman was definitely right to shoot the guy. The baby, now happy in Newman’s arms, reaches
up to touch his face, to which he responds with a smile. I love this scene because it shows both sides
of Newman’s character: he is tough and does his duty, but he’s also gentle,
sweet, and caring. I feel like this
scene encapsulates Newman’s character very well.
Despite
all these ways Noah Newman is a truly remarkable individual, he is relatively
unknown and unappreciated because he’s just a secondary character. Consequently, I consider Deputy U.S. Marshal
Noah Woodrow Newman to be the most underrated character in fiction.
Sources
The Fugitive (1993)
U.S. Marshals (1998)
IMDb.com
Tom
Wood Personal Interview, 25 May 2012
“The
Tall Guy” 8 March 1998 Chicago Tribune
