It’s been proven throughout film history, that in the future everyone’s REAL dirty. Either that, or they’re 6-foot gorillas, and even then, they’re still damn, DIRTY apes. Chuck Heston found that out the hard way in The Planet of the Apes. And if Chuck hadn’t got himself blow’d up in Numero Two-o, he’d have been able to remind Emilio Estevez to pack a bar of soap before getting launched into the future in Freejack (1992, 110 minutes). But not even Chuck could have foreseen the popularity of Emilio’s The Mighty Ducks (released the same year), which spawned two sequels, and reportedly drove Paula Abdul to eat and purge 30 pounds of chocolate-covered bear claws each and every day of their failed marriage. That’s another story. This is the one Anthony Hopkins leaves off his resume, and Mick Jagger swears they paid him a lot of money to be in.
The movie: Estevez is Alex Furlong a cocky race car driver. Rene Russo is his girlfriend — who despite makeup, still looks much too old for him. But the casting makes A BIT more sense later in the movie. But first Alex zips around the track during a big race, when he goes to pass another driver, and their wheels meet sending his car flying upward where it smashes into an overpass and explodes in a ball of flames. It’s the best part of the whole dang movie. Meanwhile, in the year 2009, Mick Jagger uses an old laser show from a Rolling Stones tour to somehow teleport Furlong into the future a moment before he’s dashed to bits. And doggoneit if it doesn’t work.
Society has crumbled in the future. The rich are FILTHY rich and the poor, well, they’re just filthy — and mad as hell about it. Furlong is what they call a "freejack," which is a person harvested from the past, for the purpose of transplanting a new mind into his body. The mind of a wealthy fella whose body crapped out on him. But a bewildered Alex escapes before they can scramble his original brain. All he can think about is finding his girlfriend, despite being the most wanted man on Earth. Mick IS a bounty hunter, after all, so he chases Emilio around, while actually AGING from scene to scene. Truly amazing.
The flick is basically one chase sequence after another, with some wacky fish-out-of-water things mixed in for good measure. Furlong finally meets up with his now corporate-big-wig girlfriend and they spend the rest of the movie trying to live happily ever after. Oh, and Russo finally looks her character’s age. CineSchlockers will recognize Jerry Hall as the scoop-hungry TV reporter who interviews a snackered Alex Furlong.
Notables: One breast. 35 corpses. Public nibbling. Lobotomizer footage. Faberge egg abuse. Rocket attack. Multiple gun battles. Champaign truck chase with multiple crash and burn. Motorcycle chase. Nun slapping. One giant eyeball. Exploding yacht. Cheese-ball computer graphics. 200-floor skyscraper.
Quotables: The tin-foil doc who restarts Furlong’s heart, "I wouldn’t want to dance to it, but that’s a pulse." Most any profanity-laced tirade from Amanda "Honey Bunny" Plummer as a gun-toting nun of the future, including, "Don’t SISTER me! Get the hell out!" And Furlong who finds himself with one bullet left, and a dozen storm troopers looking to fill him full of holes, "Think I can get them all to stand in a line?"
Time codes: The hellacious crash (9:35). Anthony Hopkins joins the picture (32:10). The hidden danger of nun interrogation (1:02:35).
Final thought: Ultimately forgettable. Mildly amusing if just for the sake of seeing a geriatric rock legend run around in a giant crash helmet.