Trivia for
U.S. Marshals (1998) More at IMDbPro »

• The jet plane that was crashed in U.S. Marshals (1998) is now located in a flooded rock quarry near Mermet, Illinois. The quarry is a dive park for scuba divers.
  
  
• The cemetery scene, which is clearly set in New York in the film, and is also referred to as "Queens Hill Cemetery" by Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) on his radio, is actually Bohemian Cemetery in Chicago.
  
  
• Dick Beebe wrote an uncredited draft of the script.
  
  
• Special Agent John Royce’s "sissy nickel pistol" is a Taurus PT945 .45 caliber handgun.
  
  
• In the bar scene at the beginning of the movie, the U.S. Marshal crew is watching themselves on TV. The reporter throws it back to "Lester", better known now as NBC's Lester Holt who was at that time the anchor at Chicago's WBBM. Lester Holt was also in the The Fugitive (1993), the movie that this is a sequel to.
  
  
• In the original script, Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) was introduced dressed up as a priest. Director Stuart Baird and costume designer Louise Frogley didn't find this interesting enough, so they came up with the idea of the chicken outfit.
  
  
• For shooting the scenes on the plane, director Stuart Baird and production designer Maher Ahmad looked at real prisoner transfer planes but were disappointed to find that they looked just like regular planes. As such, they came up with the design of the plane seen in the film - the feet restraints, the cage door, the mechanical locking system, the open toilet etc.
  
  
• The pilot of the 727 is played by Steve King, a real life pilot.
  
  
• For shooting the scene of the airplane crash, the production leased a real Boeing 727 from a Vegas casino owner, purchased two fuselages for the post-crash scenes and built a 1,000 pound model for the actual moment of impact. The scene of the crash was shot on a miniature road 1,200 feet long, with the 1000-pound model plane moving at 60 miles per hour. Because it was a one shot only situation, it was filmed by 9 cameras. The sequence was primarily directed by visual effects supervisor Peter Donen, and in total, the entire scene took 75 people 6 months to bring it all together.
  
  
• The scenes of the fuselage in the water were shot in the Ohio River, Illinois, whilst all the interiors of the plan were shot on stage in Chicago, with the fuselage rigged to a complex gimbal system so as to simulate the jolting motion of the crash. For the scenes where the plane is upside-down and sinking into the water, the scene was shot in the real upside-down fuselage, which could be submerged in a tank.
  
  
• The swamp scenes were shot on Reelfoot Lake in northwest Tennessee, in the same location as was used for Raintree County (1957) and In the Heat of the Night (1967).
  
  
• Wesley Snipes disliked shooting scenes where he is in water (of which there are two in the film), as he cannot swim.
  
  
• Most of the exterior scenes in New York were shot in the business district of Chicago, as the production couldn't get permission to shut down the streets in New York.
  
  
• When Sheridan (Wesley Snipes) rents his apartment across from the UN, he tells the landlord "It's perfect." This is the exact same line used by Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) when he rents an apartment in The Fugitive (1993).
  
  
• For the scene where the marshals are following Chen (Michael Paul Chan) over 700 extras were used.
  
  
• For the scene where Sheridan (Wesley Snipes) escapes by swinging onto a moving train, which was shot in East Harlem in New York, stuntman Clay Donahue Fontenot literally performed the stunt as it is seen in the film - he swung from the building on a 70 foot long reinforced cable and landed on the roof of a train station alongside a passing train. Because of the logistics of the scene, no safety net or airbag could be used, making it a one time only shot. It took ten weeks to plan the shot, and eight hours to set it up. It lasts for seven seconds in the film.
  
  
• All of the interiors of the Marshal's offices were shot on the 20th floor of 444 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, which was the exact same location as was used for shooting the interiors of the offices in The Fugitive (1993); even the same floor was used.
  
  
• Robert Downey Jr. did not enjoy working on the production, and in an interview shortly after its release, he said of the film "it's possibly the worst action movie of all time, and that's just not good for the maintenance of a good spiritual condition. You've had a traumatic year, you've been practically suicidal- what do you think would be really healing for you? How about like twelve weeks of running around as Johnny Handgun? I think that if you talk to a spirit guide, they would say, 'That'll kill you.' I thought maybe there was something I was missing, and what I really needed to do was to be in one of those films that I love taking my kid to. But it wound up being really depressing. I'd rather wake up in jail for a TB test than have to wake up another morning knowing I'm going to the set of U.S. Marshals."
  
  

• SPOILER: The scene where Newman (Tom Wood) is killed was edited two ways: one way which showed Royce (Robert Downey Jr.) shooting him, the other which kept it ambiguous as to whether it was Royce or Sheridan (Wesley Snipes) who shot him. The film was previewed both ways, but audiences much preferred the version which showed Royce as the killer.
  
  

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