Tommy Lee Jones: At the Top

On the fifteenth of last month, Tommy Lee Jones celebrated his forty-third birthday. The month also celebrated the release of his newest film, Double Jeopardy, which still holds the number one spot at the box office. In the film, Jones plays the parole officer for a woman wrongly convicted of killing her husband. Tommy Lee Jones falls into a familiar role as a tough guy with a soft heart somewhere deep inside.

In another of his recent films, Jones did not have a heart or even a body. He was the voice of Major Chop Hazard in the animated film, Small Soldiers. His voice appropriately delivered the down to business lines of the leader of the Commando Elite:

You've got lots of guts. Let's see what they look like.

I love the smell of polyurethane in the morning.

We are the Commando Elite. Everything else is just a toy.

The same year audiences heard his voice in Small Soldiers, they could see Jones in U.S. Marshals. In this film, Jones took on a familiar role as U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard. He played this same character five years earlier in The Fugitive. In U.S. Marshals, Gerard is an escort on a plane of convicts when it crashes and one of the convicts escapes.

Royce: I thought we didn't take our work personally.
Gerard: We don't. I do.

Cosmo Renfro: The great Sam Gerard.
Gerard: Yes, I am.
Cosmo Renfro: And you always have to win.
Sam Gerard: Yes, I do.

In The Fugitive, Gerard is pursuing a man who was wrongly convicted of killing his wife. Through his brief encounters with the convict, Dr. Richard Kimball, Gerard comes to realize that there may be some truth to Kimball's story, in spite of his efforts to simply do his job and catch the 'bad guy'.

Gerard: Newman, what are you doing?
Newman: I'm thinking.
Gerard: Well, think me up a cup of coffee and a chocolate doughnut with some of those little sprinkles on top, while you're thinking.

Cosmo Renfro: When I die, I'm gonna come back just like you.
Gerard: Oh, you mean happy and handsome?

Gerard: Let that be a lesson to you, boys and girls. Don't ever argue with the big dog, because the big dog is always right.

Dr. Richard Kimball: I didn't kill my wife.
Gerard: I don't care!

Dr. Richard Kimball: I thought you didn't care.
Gerard: I don't. (laughs) Don't tell anybody, OK?

Tommy Lee Jones played a part in the alien invaded comedy, Men In Black in 1997. He again fell into a police type role as Kay, an agent in a top-secret organization established to track and police alien activity on earth.

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