Three Fugitives

Lucas, a career bank robber, walks out of prison after serving time for fourteen armed robberies and intends to go straight. His first stop is a bank, where Ned Perry, a desperate man with no criminal experience, is attempting a holdup to pay for care for his young daughter Meg, who has stopped speaking since her mother's death. When police arrive and recognize Lucas, they assume he masterminded the crime, and the three of them go on the run together as fugitives.

Francis Veber directs and writes, adapting his own earlier French film from 1986. It sits between that film and Out on a Limb in the run of features he directed. Nick Nolte plays Lucas, Martin Short plays Perry, Sarah Rowland Doroff plays Meg, and James Earl Jones appears as Dugan, the detective pursuing them; Lauren Shuler Donner produced, and the credited cast runs to thirty-two names.

Released in January 1989, the film had a budget of about 15 million dollars and took roughly 41 million worldwide, a solid return for a comedy of its scale. Audience response has been moderate: it holds a 6.2 on IMDb from around 13,000 votes and a 6.7 on TMDB from a much smaller sample. A critics' rating of 3.9 out of 10 from fourteen reviews is noticeably lower than those viewer scores.