Freebie and the Bean
If there's no other reason for you to make the effort to see FREEBIE AND THE BEAN, take it for what's it's worth that Stanley Kubrick deemed it "the best film of 1974." I am endlessly fascinated as to what would've appealed to this most enigmatic of film directors. But often I mistakenly feel that an artist would only appreciate things that are similiar to his or her work. To wit, Kubrick also publicly stated how much he enjoyed Steve Martin's THE JERK! I laughed out loud when I read that Alfred Hitchcock was a big fan of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, too.
Richard Rush, the director of FREEBIE AND THE BEAN, like Kubrick, had a sparse output, making only 3 films in 20 years. He helmed THE STUNT MAN in 1980 (his signature film, and well worth catching) and THE COLOR OF NIGHT in 1994 (a tawdry mystery with Bruce Willis).
As with other talented filmmakers with short resumes (Paul Brickman, for one), you wonder why they didn't produce more. Someone once said that artists only have a few good years of creativity in them. Maybe that was true for Rush, as by COLOR OF NIGHT his inspiration seemed to have long since gone out for ice cream and never returned.
But FREEBIE AND THE BEAN is purely inspired lunacy. It's essentially a buddy cop film, the kind that became very popular in the 80s and beyond (48 Hrs., the LETHAL WEAPON series), filled with fast, wiseass dialogue, combative behavior, blazing firearms, and lots and lots of chases. Car chases, motorcycle chases, chases on foot. And destruction. A plethora of destruction. The most I've seen in a movie with a terrestrial setting excepting maybe THE BLUES BROTHERS. If this many things were destroyed in San Francisco in real life, people in that city would unlikely be able to afford car insurance.
This movie, however, is far loopier than any typical cop thriller/comedy. James Caan and Alan Arkin play the respective "lawmen", longtime partners who seem to possess a sort of telepathy between them. They verbally and physically abuse each other throughout the film, their loud, non-stop, overlapping arguments (are they ad-libbing?) will either entertain or irritate you, likely both. The plot involves their efforts to keep a local racketeer/mobster named Red Meyers (Jack Kruschen) alive long enough for them to introduce what they think is a smoking gun to put him away.
But hitmen targeting Red are coming out of the woodwork. Primarily a flamboyant, psychotic homosexual (Christopher Morley) with a penchant for convincing disguises and kung fu. A very broad portrayal. In 1974, this sort of outrageous caricature was more or less acceptable in a Hollywood production (and this film, while not well known these days, was a box office hit).
Evidently, so were the truckloads of ethnic slurring and racist jokes found here. Observe other police dramadies from the same period (BUSTING, THE SUPER COPS, THE NEW CENTURIONS, THE CHOIRBOYS). Nonetheless, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN did ignite a bit of controversy over its far from PC-screenplay, though I imagine it would cause far more of a ruckus if someone tried to make a movie like this today. Valerie Harper plays Arkin's Latina wife with about as much subtlety as Carmen Miranda or Ricky Ricardo (although she has a very funny and well performed extended scene with Arkin late in the picture). There are also barbs directed at Poles, African-Americans, even Texans.
I grew up in an era where Eddie Murphy's riffs on "faggots" were considered OK in mainstream entertainment, so maybe because of that, and a general jadedness and desensitization from watching thousands of movies (and um, Life), I didn't find FREEBIE as offensive as some of the folks who've written about it. It did not seem that mean-spirited to me. 48 Hrs, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, SOUTH PACIFIC (remember the song "You've Got to Be Taught"?! Though clearly, a social statement was being made there), and NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE were far more inappropriate in terms of political correctness.
And you have to consider when FREEBIE was made, as with the other films discussed. That approach will yield the greatest enjoyment of this movie, a true 70s wallow.
No wonder Quentin Tarantino loves it (he also presented it at a festival). It is a beautifully acted and directed steamroller of a movie. My favorite bits feature a fist fight that destroys an entire restaurant, the infamous "car flies off freeway into bedroom" sequence, Freebie's attempts at piloting a motorcycle, and the duo's standoff with a perp in a bathroom stall. This is one crazy movie. Critics were not kind, my favorite line coming from the New York Times' Vincent Canby, who stated that he believed the film had been directed by a car.
For Mr. Kubrick, maybe it was a nice break from the rigors of directing BARRY LYNDON.
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