Freejack (1992) – Review

Where to watch Freejack

2 1/2 Stars

Raymond Chandler often describe a snub nosed .38 revolver as a ‘Saturday Night Special’. It was meant as a reference to a junk gun, to be used on a troubled night then easily discarded. Freejack is the ‘Saturday Night Special’ of movies. It provides modest entertainment on a slow weekend night, then is instantly forgettable. Taking its visual design (to no avail) from (the superior) Blade Runner and mixing in humor with futuristic action (less successfully than Demolition Man), Freejack is often ludicrous and under-plotted, but never boring.

Alex Furlong (Emilio Estevez) is a Formula One car driver who dies in a fiery death on national television in 1991. He awakes in the (then future) year 2009, with bounty hunters in pursuit of his body. In this nightmarish vision of the future, the rich pay for healthy bodies to transport their minds and souls into. It’s a form of immortality. Since Alex died on T.V., the lead hunter Vacendak (Mick Jagger) and his band of hackers are able to get the space/time coordinates, and steal Alex from 1991 before he dies.

Now, alone and without working knowledge of the society, Alex must find allies and shelter while attempting to keep his mind and body whole. A wealthy corporate figure-head (Anthony Hopkins) is pulling the strings and financing Alex’s capture, while his executive (Rene Russo) is Alex’s former lover and only hope for help. The ‘freejack’ moniker is meant as a slang term for the teleported.

Emilio Estevez looks to be attempting a role in the vein of something his buddy, Tom Cruise, might have been attracted to. It’s a capable performance in a movie that is B-level on most other tiers of production. Outside of the expensive cast, Jagger and Hopkins included, Freejack is a run-of-the-mill sci-fi parable that too closely resembles the movies it was ‘inspired’ by.

Director: Geoff Murphy
Stars:Emilio Estevez, Mick Jagger, Rene Russo, Anthony Hopkins

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