Every morning when I turn on the television, the channel called “Movie Action Hub” is already playing. I have never intentionally selected this channel. Under normal circumstances I would change it immediately.
Unfortunately, I am currently laid up in a recliner recovering from foot surgery. (The surgery was February 10. It is now March 6. I am pretty much doomed.)
Anyway, the movie du jour was Freejack, and I caught only the last twenty or thirty minutes, which means I am not remotely qualified to review it. Naturally, I am going to do that anyway.
The film stars Emilio Estevez, who appears to maintain the same facial expression for (I’m assuming) the entire movie. Mick Jagger is also in it. Yes, that Mick Jagger.
It also features Sir Anthony Hopkins, who most people know as Hannibal Lecter. Rene Russo and Jonathan Banks are in it as well, and Jerry Hall (if you’re under forty may need to Google her) shows up too, which feels appropriate given that she was once married to Mick Jagger. Esai Morales also appears. In other words, the cast is oddly respectable for a movie that seems to require a very specific state of mind.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it 29%, which honestly feels generous.
Freejack came out in 1992 and was directed by Geoff Murphy, a man whose résumé includes several Steven Seagal movies. That fact alone tells you quite a lot about what you are about to experience.
The story takes place in the distant future of 2009. In this version of the future, technology has advanced far enough that extremely wealthy elderly people can hire criminals to travel back in time, kidnap healthy young victims, and deliver them to the present so their bodies can be used for brain transplants. Mick Jagger plays one of the people who does the kidnapping. Emilio Estevez plays Alex Furlong, a race car driver who is plucked out of the past moments before a fatal crash and transported to the future to serve as someone else’s replacement body.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, he escapes.
What follows is a chase through a grim version of New York City while various people attempt to recapture him before the elderly billionaire who purchased his body loses the opportunity to move into it. I cannot speak with authority about the first hour of the movie, but the final stretch consists largely of people shouting, running, and making extremely intense eye contact.
The film is loosely based on the 1959 Hugo Award–winning novel Immortality, Inc., by Robert Sheckley. That sounds impressive until you watch the movie and realize that somewhere between the book and the final edit, several things may have gone sideways.
The soundtrack features bands such as the Scorpions, Jesus Jones, and Jane Child, which means the movie feels like a time capsule from the early 1990s. (Not that Emilio Estevez in a starring role wasn’t already doing most of that work.)
At one point the stream buffered and that little spinning circle appeared in the middle of the screen while the internet tried to catch up. You may not be surprised to hear that the interruption actually improved the experience.
You can watch the entire movie on YouTube now, which seems fair.
Absurdities and Fires 