FREEJACK
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: JACKASS is more like it. Violent, ugly, stupid, and boring sci-fi chase film, purported based on Robert Sheckley's IMMORTALITY, INC., though actually borrowing just an idea or two. FREEJACK exemplifies everything that is going wrong with current big-budget science fiction films. Rating: low -2 (-4 to +4).
Robert Sheckley, already known for short stories in 1958 when he published his first novel. IMMORTALITY, INC. had a science fiction style but was actually a fantasy story based on the idea that in some cases the soul does survive when a person dies and that souls can be transplanted to new bodies. In the novel Thomas Blaine crashes his car on the New Jersey Turnpike late one night in the year 1958 and finds his soul transplanted into an unfamiliar body in the year 2110. If all this sounds familiar, you did *not* get it from seeing the new supposed film version FREEJACK. In fact, there is only an idea or two that Freejack may have borrowed from IMMORTALITY, INC. and a few more borrowed, uncredited, from John Varley's MILLENNIUM (or perhaps the film version of that story). But, okay, so FREEJACK is not a good adaptation. Is it at least a good movie? And the answer is "No, FREEJACK is a *terrible* movie." Cut off about ten minutes at each end and the film is one long chase story set on a futuristic background that makes no sense for any year as near as its 2009.
Emelio Estevez plays Alex Furlong, a race car driver who is plucked from a fiery crash and thrown into the super-violent and incredibly run-down world of 2009. It seems that there is a huge corporation that wants Furlong's body. His mind they have no use for. And for about the next ninety minutes you won't need your mind either. Of course, there is something of a mystery going on in this future world. But it is the sort of mystery intended to give the audience the cheap thrill of saying, "Aha! I knew it all along!" If you are surprised at who is pulling all the strings, perhaps you deserve this film.
The set direction at best looks like a cheap-jack version of BLADERUNNER, and at times looks as if they had just filmed in any slum they could find. This view of the world eighteen years hence is neither original nor imaginative. BLADERUNNER's art director would look at every object in a scene and redesign just enough to give you the feeling time had passed. The parking meters would be completely redesigned, for example. The closer you looked, the more interesting detail you saw. Not so here. There is no quality in the set design. The equivalent here is redesigning a delivery truck to make a product placement more evident. Most of the cars of the future look either like cars of the 1980s, cars of the 1980s with big fiberglass shells over them to disguise them. One of my pet peeves is a script that makes calendar mistakes. (There is a number trick for figuring what days dates fall on.) And any almanac should have told a scriptwriter who cared that November 23, 2009, falls on a Monday, not a Thursday. In another scene we meet what is apparently a homeless man who must eat river rat. It would not be a bad little detail but for the fact that inside the grungy clothing he has a neatly trimmed beard and smooth, shaved cheeks.
Casting is another place where the film falls flat. Emelio Estevez, who has not had a decent film since THE BREAKFAST CLUB, just looks too young and does not have the acting power for this role. Mick Jagger plays Vacendak, a hired killer and the head of a private security army. There is absolutely nothing about him that adds anything to Vacendak that was not in the script. The best that can be said is that he does not detract from the role. We might expect that, since Jagger has little acting experience. But what is surprising is that Anthony Hopkins apparently chose just to act his role as a corporate executive and to put nothing extra in it. Either director Geoff Murphy did not let Hopkins do much or Hopkins was just simply uninspired.
Overall, we have a film with no characters and no core. In their place we have chases and gunfights. The producers didn't even have the sense to borrow what was good about the novel it claims to be based on. I give FREEJACK a low -2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
(The novel has been published as IMMORTALITY, INC. and earlier in a shorter form as IMMORTALITY DELIVERED. It was serialized in GALAXY magazine October 1958 to February 1959 under the title TIME KILLER. It is currently available in a movie tie-in edition as FREEJACK, though the novel itself has no reference to the term "freejack" nor to jacks of any kind.)
Mark R. Leeper
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