Freejack

-Warner Bros. (1991)

Summary

Emilio Estevez is on the run from Mick Jagger and his big-ass helmet.

My Thoughts

You know a film is bad when the friend you're watching it with says, "Doesn't this movie ever end? I mean come on!" His statement wasn't only warranted, its right on the money.

For some reason I remember somewhat liking this film when I was a kid so decided to give it a watch again. Boy, liking this film is on my big list of regrets like my first girlfriend and parting my hair on the side in high school.

The film tries to pretend its good by beginning on a pretty high note. Intercut between the future and the "present" Emilio Estevez is racing in some big important race. In the future some military-looking guys are setting up an experiment. There is a hint of horrible things to come when Mick Jagger is first seen, but it’s only a hint. Meanwhile, back in the past Emilio is racing and in a tragic accident his car flies into an overpass and blows up. At the same moment the people in the future snatch him out of the air into their portable hospital.

That's it. That's all you have to watch. About 10 minutes and the movie is done.

But, if you refuse to stop watching you'll be treated to an epic science fiction masterpiece that will change your life. 

Emilio is pulled into the future where some doctors want to lobotomize him, but are interrupted by an attack on their convoy. Emilio Estevez's character, Alex Furlong, escapes from Mick Jagger’s deadly doctors and the film is a man on the run story. Alex finds out that rich people of the future can hijack people from the past in order to live in their bodies when their old ones die.

Alex learns this by being told these things by everyone who meets him Yes, this film is a bad exposition spewing adventure. Mr. Furlong doesn't really have to do anything, just bump into people who are helpful enough to explain things to him.

Alex is on the run the whole movie, from a big helmeted Mick Jagger. Mick plays, Victor Vacendak a "bone-jacker". Bone-Jacker…wow that's way too easy of a joke. Mick plays his part fairly well, but I really can't see him as a badass from the future. In my mind he's a guy that wears a big scarf and struts around like a chicken singing, "I can't get no satisfaction, no no no, hey hey hey."

The costuming in this movie is simply awful. Not bad awful, but laugh inducing, horrible awful. You’ve probably noticed my jabs at the gigantic helmet that Mick Jagger sports, and this head gear is perhaps the stupidest thing I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. He looks like a giant black headed Q-tip. The foot soldiers' uniforms aren't that much better either. It seems like they wanted to come up with a cool storm trooper type costume and ended up with a cast off outfit from Dr. Who. The bad costuming comes to a head in a climatic action sequence when Alex Furlong kills one of these soldiers and decides, for some stupid unknown reason, to throw on the helmet from the soldier he just killed. Why? It looks like he is impressed by its stopping power, but why run around in a helmet and no other armor? Couldn’t the bad guys just shoot him in the other 90% of his body? Despite this leap in logic, in the next scene we are treated to a battle between Mick Jagger and Emilio Estevez both sporting big ugly stupid helmets.

Another sign that this is a bad movie are the cars of the future. The movie is set in the year 2009, which is a horrible decision to actually name the year of the film since it will be dated in only about 5 more years, but I digress.  These cars are ridiculous pieces of giant plastic taken from some plastic manufactures wet bubble dream fantasy. Why in the hell would car design take such a horrible leap in only 20 years?

The design isn’t the only bad thing about this film as the script mires it in a terrible muck. Aside from all the bad dialogue the plot is boring. All Alex can do for over half the film is try to escape. There really isn't a place for him to go, just escape. He finds some help, then gets screwed, finds some more, and so on and so on. He only has a little power over his situation at the end, and by that point there's one too many competing forces that it becomes tiresome to care anymore. I'm not stupid, but one point in the movie I stopped caring about what was going on.  To top it off, the film is only filled with a few memorable lines and plenty of horribly stupid ones such as the groan inducing taunt by Alex, "You couldn't catch a cold. You couldn't catch the clap in a whorehouse!" Ouch, that one stings.

There is a brief period at the end where the film gets cool again. When Alex goes up in the giant tower to meet Ian McCandless, the head bad guy, played by Anthony Hopkins in a what-the-hell-was-he-thinking-at-the-time role, there is a pretty cool scene where they’re in this trippy mind world talking things out with Ian. There is a sort of clever twist, but then the movie gets stupid again very quickly. I'm not going to spoil it, but when Emilio Estevez tries to act like Anthony Hopkins, it is proof positive that you can never ever mistake Emilio Estevez for a serious actor. 

This film has a huge campiness level that I usually enjoy, but in this film its just downright bad. It's a crappy straight to tape movie that somehow got a big budget and some decent actors.

Extras

This is an old school, bargain bin release of a film that bombed. Therefore, the extras are terrible.  What you get is a trailer and some useless and pointless talent files.  You also get one of the worst extras ever. It's labeled, "Experience Our Website", and when you click on it, it brings you to a text link to Warner’s website. Whoop de do.

Score:

Film: 3.0

Extras: 1.0

Edition: 2.0

If it’s 5 bucks there's probably a reason why.

-Paul