Deputy Marshal Noah Newman

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