It's hard not to go in with some expectations when a film boasts the credentials this one does, from a screenplay co-written by Ronald Shusett (TOTAL RECALL, ALIEN), to villainous co-starring turns from Mick Jagger and Anthony Hopkins. Alas, even the lowest expectations go unmet by
FREEJACK, which turns out to be an inexplicably lame, penny-pinched futuristic actioner.
Emilio Estevez adds to his groaning gallery of wooden portrayals as big-time race driver Alex Furlong, who's about to get creamed on the track. The event is being eagerly anticipated from the future by bounty hunter Vacendak (Jagger), who supplies strapping young bodies to the old and infirm. His
client is big-shot corporate executive McCandless (Hopkins), who is already dead, but who appears to his underlings as a video hologram and whose spirit is being temporarily kept alive in a high-tech facility until a suitable body can be found.
A barrage of electronic gadgetry is used to spirit Furlong's body out of the past just seconds prior to his pulverization in the arranged accident. A radical lobotomy will then be performed to remove his own mind and replace it with McCandless's. Naturally, something goes wrong. Furlong regains
consciousness in the future and escapes Vacendak's evil clutches before the scheduled brain transfer can take place, making him the outlaw "freejack" of the title. The remainder of the movie is given over to a tedious array of chases, with Vacendak after Furlong and the latter determined to
uncover the reason he's being pursued. Meanwhile, Vacendak also tries to ferret out the traitor in his midst who's passing on his moves and strategies to an unknown third party interested in bringing Furlong back dead, rather than alive.
FREEJACK insists that we care about Furlong's plight, but it never quite gets around to explaining why. Instead, it expects us to get so caught up in the schematic succession of double-crosses, triple-crosses, chases and pitched gun battles that we don't notice there isn't all that much going on.
The "surprises" are fairly transparent from the outset, but what's imponderable is how the future got to be the way it's portrayed here--it's not even clear how many years hence the main action is set.
None of these other weaknesses is helped at all by Geoff Murphy's sluggish direction and the film's overall cheapjack production values, which sustain a mood of solemn silliness throughout, from futuristic "vehicles" that look suspiciously like painted-over city street sweepers, to Vacendak's
ridiculous disco-maniac, hellbent-for-leather attire. Beyond Banks and Hopkins, the acting is also generally uninspired, with Jagger suffering from an extreme shortage of screen time--and Estevez suffering from a notable surplus. And who'd want to inhabit Emilio's body anyway? leave a comment
