Jumpin’ Freejack Flash
Jun 3, 2008 | Filed under Movies
I TiVo’ed 1992’s Freejack off of HDNet Movies recently (Best. Channel. Ever.), and finally got around to watching it for the first time since I was thirteen. The movie has not aged well, although there are some pretty interesting sci-fi concepts buried underneath early 90’s action cheese and an incredibly convoluted script. Emilio Estevez is a race car driver in the totally-rad present (1991) who has a horrible, fatal accident during the biggest race of his career. Except instead of being killed, he’s zapped into a dark and dystopian future where the ultra-rich can buy immortality. They do this by hiring Mick Jagger to “jack” victims whose exact location and time of death are known, which isn’t nearly as fun as the word “jack” makes it sound.
Mick Jagger’s character’s name is Vacendak, which sounds as awkward as it looks. Every time Estevez tried to say it, it sounded like he was trying to say something else, but he had a lozenge stuck in his throat. Nevertheless, Vacendak is the best in the business – probably because he has approximately two hundred loyal, disposable men at his command – so things should run smoothly. Things don’t run smoothly, however, and Estevez, whose character Alex Furlong is also awkwardly named, finds himself a fugitive in the dark, futuristic world of 2009.
In this dark, futuristic dystopia (six months from now), Alex finds out that he’s what’s known as a “Freejack” – an illegal snatched supposed-to-be-dead guy with a price on his head. Since Alex’s escape was so dependent on chance and outside interference, then one has to assume that there are other, “budget-conscious” body collectors out there, not nearly the professional grade of Vacendak. These low-rent bone-jackers must have a hard time keeping tabs on their “meat”, since snatched people run free frequently enough that they have a term for it. Anyway, Alex runs through the scary world of New York in 2009 and ends up at meeting a nun, who is apparently taking Jules Winfield’s advice and making penance for robbing that coffee shop back in 1994. Sister Honey Bunny sets up our guy Alex with an address and a pistol, and sends him on his way.
Along his adventure in the far-off year of 2009, Alex encounters video phones, armored dune buggies, a black limo driver who carries around a samurai sword (literally, he carries it…he could have at least put the sheath on his belt or something), and finds out he’s become some kind of symbol of hope for grandmothers, or something. He also finds out that one giant corporation pretty much runs everything, just like every other science fiction dystopia in any movie ever made, ever. The also awkwardly-named evil-ly big company, McCandless, just happens to be where Alex’s 1991 girlfriend Renee Russo has become a hot-shot power executive, working directly for Mr. McCandless. Russo, who has very gracefully aged in the last eighteen years, thinks her boss is a decent guy, but is apparently unaware that he’s played by Anthony Hopkins less than a year after Silence of the Lambs, meaning something probably isn’t all that right about him.
After a string of supporting characters who are hastily introduced and just as quickly shooed out of the film, Alex still has to make it through five double-crosses (I counted) and three false-endings before he makes it to the ending credits. Like I said, the movie doesn’t hold up very well, except if used to grill on a sandwich (har har). The initial concept is pretty interesting, and the end sequence is still kind of cool, even though the screenwriters probably pitched it as “Hannibal Lecter + The Lawnmower Man.” It may be worth it to check out the book the movie is loosely based on, especially since its Wikipedia entry doesn’t have a decent synopsis.
Also, now I have “Sympathy for the Devil” stuck in my head. Thanks, Mick.
June 8th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I have missed our nerd conversations…thanks for passing the link to me, I added you to my blog roll.
Frack.
Now I just have to write more I guess. Thanks for adding to the pressure.