Freejack (1992)

nTitle: Freejack (1992)

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nDirector: Geoff Murphy

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nCast: Emilio Estevez, Rene Russo, Mick Jagger, AnthonynHopkins, Jonathan Banks, David Johansen, Amanda Plummer, Esai Morales

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nFreejack has an interesting idea behind it: rich people fromnthe future steal bodies from the past seconds before they are about to die sonthat they can use these bodies to transfer their own consciousness into themnand get a second chance at life, in a new body. So I guess we could say that innthe future, rich people have discovered the secret to immortality. But whatnhappens when one of these bodies resists being lobotomized and is fully aware ofnwhat’s being done to them? This is the premise for Freejack, a film based onnthe novel Immortality Inc. by Robert Sheckley. So yeah, interesting premise forna film, did the filmmakers pull it off well? Or is this another botchednadaptation?

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nI haven’t read the novel, so I couldn’t tell you how well itntranslates from book to film, but I will say that the film has some interestingnideas behind it while still delivering some action. This is essentially a chasenfilm, the kind of film in which characters are always running, jumping andnescaping certain death. In that sense, Freejack is never a boring film. Thenfilm attempts also to infuse the proceedings with a hint of comedy, by this Indon’t mean that it is ‘hardy har har funny’ but it certainly does have its farenshare of one liners. Emilio Estevez plays Alex Furlong, the man on the run.nWhile watching this film I couldn’t help and compare it a bit to Paul Verhoeven’snTotal Recall (1989), which in my opinion is the film that Freejack is trying tonimitate, at least in tone. The problem is that nobody could imitate PaulnVerhoeven’s acidic sense of humor and so Freejack just comes off as goofy,nprimarily because its leading man doesn’t seem to be taking things toonseriously, he seems to be having a good old time with all these people chasingnhim and cars exploding around him. The film has this uneven tone to it, is itnfunny? Is it serious? I guess the only guy to blame for this would be Geoff Murphy,nthe films director.

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nI don’t know whose idea it was to put Emilio Estevez in thenstarring role, but in my book he just doesn’t pull of a convincing leading man,nhe looks like somebody who’s just goofing around the set rather than somebodynwho is running for his life. I guess the only reason Emilio Estevez is on thisnmovie is because he’d worked before with Geoff Murphy on Young Guns II (1990).nBut I could definitely see somebody else on the title role, somebody with anlittle more ‘gravitas’, cause Estevez just doesn’t have them. In terms of supportingnactors the film is solid; we get Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo and we even get MicknJagger as a lackey and New York Dolls front man David Johansen in a small role.nBut with such a solid cast, where Freejack failed was in choosing Estevez asnthe leading man. He seems more suited for a silly comedy like Loaded Weapon 1 (1993)nthan a science fiction film like this one.

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nThe good thing about Freejack is that it has plenty of action sequences,nthe only problem is that it suffers from what a lot of action films from the 80’snsuffered from: the chase sequences feel like a check list of every car stuntnknown to man. So you’re like ‘oh they’re doing the car flipping over and exploding trick’, they definetly have a been there done that feel to them at times. Now imagine that withnEmilio Estevez pulling a one liner every time a car explodes and you get thenjist of the kind of action sequences you can expect from Freejack. Still, somenof the car stunts are pretty cool, however unbelievable.

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nOn the cyberpunk side of things we get the dilapidatednsociety, with rich people living in luxury and the poor living extreme poverty.nWe get the element of transferring human consciousness into a computer and thennusing modern technology to transfer a consciousness into a new human body. Sonthere’s that common element seen in many Cyberpunk films of the ‘ghost in thenmachine’, an idea that was recently seen in Transcendence (2014) and also innJohnny Mnemonic (1994). Cool part about this whole ghost in the machinenbusiness is that it lends itself for some cool computer graphics andncompositions which might feel a bit dated, but I’ll be honest, still looknpretty cool by today’s standards. We also get that idea that big corporationsnhave taken over the world, which is a staple of cyberpunk cinema, the bigncompany is the big bad guy.

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nAnother fault the film has is that cars that are supposed tonlook ‘futuristic’ , don’t. This is something that so many low to medium budgetnsci-fi films suffer from, the cheap or clunky looking cars. Last time Inremember seeing it was on Equilibrium (2002). The problem is that they convertnexisting cars by adding a couple of panels and a coat of paint. Then voila!,nthey call them futuristic, but god, on this one it’s so blatantly obvious thatnthey are not. Not to the director: painting a military vehicle red does not makenit futuristic! So yeah, you get these clunky looking cars, which are not cool.nThese are the times when I miss Syd Mead or Jean Giraud doing the conceptualndesigns. Conceptual designs are so important in a science fiction film, if youndon’t pay attention to conceptual design, where the artist designs elements from the film to make them look functional andncool at the same time, well, you get the clunkiness. I mean, look at the carsnin freaking Blade Runner! The freaking Spinners are so awesome! I wanted anSpinner! But I do not want any of the cars in Freejack. In the end, Freejack isna fun, fast paced films that has a couple of hiccups along the way but is stillna fun watch in my book. I like those scenes with Emilio Estevez and AnthonynHopkins battling for their respective minds! Just don’t expect a masterpiecenand you’ll be fine, this one is a glorified b-movie all the way!

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nRating: 3 out of 5 

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