It takes a while to get used to Mick Jagger as a paid predator, wearing a goofy helmet and spouting lines like, ”Get the meat!” But by the end of
”Freejack,” a fairly silly new sci-fi action thriller, rock star Jagger has made the role his own. Unquestionably, his best scene is the one in which he gives his prey a five-minute head start, then bows his head and starts counting: ”One, Mississippi, two. . . . ”
Co-written and co-produced by Ron Shusett, ”Freejack” deals in the same sort of testosterone-fed mayhem as ”Total Recall,” which Shusett also co-wrote. But in the hands of director Geoff Murphy, a New Zealander whose previous American credit is ”Young Guns II,” it has a lighter, more playful touch, as it careens through the story of a racecar driver (Emilio Estevez) who dies in 1991, only to be resurrected in 2009 by a dying tycoon
(Anthony Hopkins) who wants to appropriate his body.
Estevez, who gets a lot of mileage from a quirky grin in a role that is essentially reactive, goes on the lam, nimbly threading his way through a twisty plot and an apocalyptic landscape whose inhabitants include a gun-toting nun (Amanda Plummer, in a fiendishly gleeful cameo) given to epithets like ”Holy s—!” and a rhetorical rat eater (Grand Bush) given to lengthy parables about the American eagle.
Help eventually arrives in the form of Estevez`s old fiance (Rene Russo), who now works for Hopkins. But the two have many a laser to dodge and many a crashed car to escape from before they can motor off into whatever remains of the future.
”Freejack” relies heavily on auto crashes to wrap up its action scenes, and while that suggests a lack of imagination (and a restrained budget), it is at least a step up from the constant glass-shattering of
”Total Recall.”
No country of origin is credited with the outrageously designed sedans and the clunky little tank cars we`re supposed to be driving in this view of the future, incidentally, but Japan has apparently gone on to more important technology.
The movie treats us to several product plugs-for auto parts and champagne, among other things-to help defray the cost of so many explosions. Curiously, in a film in which supporting roles are more interesting than starring, Anthony Hopkins appears bland, practically phoning in the role of the desperate, disingenuous billionaire who controls the ”spiritual switchboard” that can patch old minds into new bodies.
The movie displays plenty of what are by now cliches of the genre: Its blue-lit future, ravaged by pollution and social inequity, in which all but a tiny nucleus of the most fortunate live in lawless shantytowns and in which civil war is rife, is not a kinder and gentler America but a nastier and rougher one that Hollywood has visited often. That it is set only 17 years hence and released in an election year gives the movie a little extra political punch.
`FREEJACK`
(STAR)(STAR) 1/2
Directed by Geoff Murphy; written by Steven Pressfield, Ronald Shusett and Dan Gilroy, based on the novel ”Immortality, Inc.,” by Robert Sheckley; edited by Dennis Virkler; photographed by Amir Mokri; production designed by Joe Alves; music by Trevor Jones; produced by Ronald Shusett and Stuart Oken; executive produced by James G. Robinson, Gary Barber and David Nicksay. A Warner Bros. release at the Esquire, Burnham Plaza, Biograph and outlying theaters. MPAA rating: R. Running time: 110 minutes.
THE CAST
Alex Furlong…………..Emilio Estevez
Vacendak…………………Mick Jagger
Julie…………………….Rene Russo
McCandless……………Anthony Hopkins
Michelette…………….Jonathan Banks
Brad Hines…………….David Johansen
Boone…………………….Grand Bush
Nun…………………..Amanda Plummer
