Saturday, September 14, 2019

Movie review - "Freebie and the Bean" (1974) **1/2

Buddy comedy beloved by people who love the 70s - full of hyuck hyuck hyuck, talk about "spics" and "fags", women are sluts and nags and transvestites.

The direction by Richard Rush is very interesting - it's full of movement and action, and the acting is good across the board.  I was particularly impressed by the action sequences - interrogating a man on top of a building (James Caan looks terrified), a shoot out in a dentists office, a fight in a packed female toilet. The car chases were more familiar but the whole movie has this real "oh my goodness they just went and shot this" feel about it.

Caan and Arkin are both excellent and have superb chemistry - I'm surprised they never reteamed. Or maybe they were too annoying on this one. It's one of Caan's best roles, suits him to a tee as a hung ho cop always justifying his corruption. It's a very morally ambigious movie - I mean our heroes shoot someone dead in a toilet when he's unarmed. He is a hitman but still.

It's a buddy comedy that claims to have invented the form - surely not, not even for cops.

I'm not wild about this sort of movie but I did like the acting, the look of it, some of the action. Jeez the seventies were nihilistic.

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