Flicks of Shame: what's a nice actor like you doing in a movie like this?

Freejack (1992)

Winning an Oscar doesn’t necessarily make you immune from making really, really stupid decisions. After all, Anthony Hopkins followsed his Academy Award for Silence of the Lambs with this ludicrously camp sci-fi action romp, in which he hires the lead singer of the Rolling Stones to inject him into the brain of Emilio Estevez.

Oh yeah. Stick with it. It gets even better.

Emilio plays Alex Furlong, a devil-may-care racing car driver who explodes in a fiery inferno of death on the track. Or, rather, he doesn’t. The instant before the reaper can claim him he’s snatched eighteen years into the future to the year 2009, and a world where the ozone layer is gone, the world’s water is essentially poisonous, and deceased millionaires gain immortality by employing the services of Mick Jagger’s futuristic body snatcher.

While you’d be forgiven for thinking that maybe Mick is in the habit of snatching these virile young men in order to feast on their brains, thus keeping him young and limber for the annual Rolling Stones farewell tour, the gurning rock legend is actually in the business of providing these fresh – and pollution free – bodies for the decadent and elderly rich of the future.

Anthony Hopkins, in a role that amounts to roughly five minutes of screen time, plays Mr MacCandless, one such recently dead geezer and also the boss of the biggest corporation in the world, which also happens to be the company responsible for the “spiritual switchboard”, the afterlife matchmaking system that puts disembodied clients together with their new bodies.

Conveniently for him, the spiritual switchboard is also where his mind resides while Jagger tracks down Furlong. Time is running out – just like ripe pears, the mind can only be kept for a short time before it turns to useless mush.

Of course, before MacCandless can be transferred into his crisp new flesh suit, the current occupant has to be disposed of. This doesn’t go down well, and Emilio legs it into a confusing, scary and rather cheap looking dystopian future. To make matters worse, Emilio meets up with his fiancée Julie (Rene Russo), who is not only fifteen years older than him (though looking much the same) but she’s working for Anthony Hopkins. Really, what are the chances?

After a frankly tedious number of drawn out chases, we finally learn that the reason MacCandless is so hellbent on getting Furlong’s body is because he’s in love with Julie, and as she still holds a torch for Alex after eighteen years, nicking his body seems like the quickest way to get a shag. “I was, of course, quite mad” admits MacCandless, having tricked the hapless couple into entering his low budget CGI mental domain. But the transfer is interrupted before it completes, and we’re left to wonder if MacCandless has become so much cyber-soup or if poor Alex Furlong really has bequeathed his mortal coil to the ghost of an insane Welsh billionaire.

It certainly seems as if all is lost, but – cheeky scamp that he is – Furlong is just pretending to be MacCandless so he and Julie can escape to live in filthy rich freedom, zooming off over the end credits to the strains of a jaunty pop ballad.

Jagger, shamed by his inability to catch even a mid-level Brat Pack star, is forced to return once more to the marginally less ludicrous world of stadium rock, preening and galloping around on stage like a senile monkey.

Need to know: Hopkins followed Freejack with the rather more sensible Howard’s End, though 1992 did also see him engaged in a war of the hams with Gary Oldman in Coppola’s lurid Dracula remake. Thankfully, his scenery chewing turn as Van Helsing was overshadowed by Keanu Reeves’ remarkable decision to play Jonathan Harker as a wooden mannequin with a Dick Van Dyke cockney accent.

Freejack reunited Emilio Estevez with his Young Guns II director, Geoff Murphy, and was written by Ronald Shusset, one of the writers of the original Alien. It was based on a novel by Robert Sheckley, whose book The Game of X was the inspiration for the infamous Michael Crawford superhero flick, Condorman.

Also among the cast of Freejack are Amanda Plummer, better known as Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction, as a foul-mouth, gun-toting nun and Jagger’s then-missus, Jerry Hall, as a predictably vapid TV host broadcasting from a nightclub so futuristic it’s still playing Jesus Jones records.

Availability: Freejack is available on DVD in both the UK and US.

		Freejack (1992) Winning an Oscar doesn’t necessarily make you immune from making really, really stupid decisions. After all, Anthony Hopkins followsed his Academy Award for Silence of the Lambs with this ludicrously camp sci-fi action romp, in which he hires the lead singer of the Rolling Stones to inject him into the brain of Emilio Estevez. Oh yeah. Stick with it. It gets even better. Emilio plays Alex Furlong, a devil-may-care racing car driver who explodes in a fiery inferno of death on the track. Or, rather, he doesn’t. The instant before the reaper can claim him he’s snatched eighteen years into the future to the year 2009, and a world where the ozone layer is gone, the world’s water is essentially poisonous, and deceased millionaires gain immortality by employing the services of Mick Jagger’s futuristic body snatcher. While you’d be forgiven for thinking that maybe Mick is in the habit of snatching these virile young men in order to feast on their brains, thus keeping him young and limber for the annual Rolling Stones farewell tour, the gurning rock legend is actually in the business of providing these fresh – and pollution free – bodies for the decadent and elderly rich of the future. Anthony Hopkins, in a role that amounts to roughly five minutes of screen time, plays Mr MacCandless, one such recently dead geezer and also the boss of the biggest corporation in the world, which also happens to be the company responsible for the “spiritual switchboard”, the afterlife matchmaking system that puts disembodied clients together with their new bodies. Conveniently for him, the spiritual switchboard is also where his mind resides while Jagger tracks down Furlong. Time is running out – just like ripe pears, the mind can only be kept for a short time before it turns to useless mush. Of course, before MacCandless can be transferred into his crisp new flesh suit, the current occupant has to be disposed of. This doesn’t go down well, and Emilio legs it into a confusing, scary and rather cheap looking dystopian future. To make matters worse, Emilio meets up with his fiancée Julie (Rene Russo), who is not only fifteen years older than him (though looking much the same) but she’s working for Anthony Hopkins. Really, what are the chances? After a frankly tedious number of drawn out chases, we finally learn that the reason MacCandless is so hellbent on getting Furlong’s body is because he’s in love with Julie, and as she still holds a torch for Alex after eighteen years, nicking his body seems like the quickest way to get a shag. “I was, of course, quite mad” admits MacCandless, having tricked the hapless couple into entering his low budget CGI mental domain. But the transfer is interrupted before it completes, and we’re left to wonder if MacCandless has become so much cyber-soup or if poor Alex Furlong really has bequeathed his mortal coil to the ghost of an insane Welsh billionaire. It certainly seems as if all is lost, but – cheeky scamp that he is – Furlong is just pretending to be MacCandless so he and Julie can escape to live in filthy rich freedom, zooming off over the end credits to the strains of a jaunty pop ballad. Jagger, shamed by his inability to catch even a mid-level Brat Pack star, is forced to return once more to the marginally less ludicrous world of stadium rock, preening and galloping around on stage like a senile monkey. Need to know: Hopkins followed Freejack with the rather more sensible Howard’s End, though 1992 did also see him engaged in a war of the hams with Gary Oldman in Coppola’s lurid Dracula remake. Thankfully, his scenery chewing turn as Van Helsing was overshadowed by Keanu Reeves’ remarkable decision to play Jonathan Harker as a wooden mannequin with a Dick Van Dyke cockney accent. Freejack reunited Emilio Estevez with his Young Guns II director, Geoff Murphy, and was written by Ronald Shusset, one of the writers of the original Alien. It was based on a novel by Robert Sheckley, whose book The Game of X was the inspiration for the infamous Michael Crawford superhero flick, Condorman. Also among the cast of Freejack are Amanda Plummer, better known as Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction, as a foul-mouth, gun-toting nun and Jagger’s then-missus, Jerry Hall, as a predictably vapid TV host broadcasting from a nightclub so futuristic it’s still playing Jesus Jones records. Availability: Freejack is available on DVD in both the UK and US.
Text © 2008 Dan Whitehead. No cut and paste, y'hear? All images remain the property of the offending studios and their reproduction is covered by Fair Use law.