1900HOTDOG

Nerding Day: Bonejackin'!

Added 2024-09-18 12:00:14 +0000 UTC

Freejack is a 1992 movie in which racecar driver Emilio Estevez is ripped from his time into a dark and twisted future to serve as a host body for the decaying consciousness of an old rich bastard. It was released in the long dark night of the Estevez soul, the period after Repo Man and The Breakfast Club but before The Mighty Ducks. That era also included the fraternal team-up picture Men at Work, Estevez's breakup with Demi Moore, and a film he directed and starred in that also featured a score by Danny Elfman. So, you know, it was a pretty dark fucking period.

But we're not here to talk about Emilio Estevez today. We're not even really here to talk about Rene Russo, who plays Estevez's love interest slash reluctant lobe chewer.

Amazingly, incredibly, we're not even here to talk about Mick Jagger as Victor Vacendak, a mercenary "bonejacker" who purses Estevez throughout the film.

No, today we're here to follow the story of Freejack through its cast of secondary characters, a who's who of faces seemingly generated by God for the express purpose of seeming familiar but eternally resisting any association with a name.

An ex once roasted me by saying that I'm liable to interrupt any film by interjecting something like, "wow, that's Bill Kringle! He played Male Nurse #2 in The Canadian Exorcist!" She left suddenly, with nothing but a text message, nearly two years ago. I don't know if those two things are related, but during the long, lonely nights, the mind draws connections.

Well, I watch movies alone now, [name withheld to protect the innocent]! And I'll recognize whatever bit part actor I please, whenever I damn please!

Welcome to Bill Kringle's Freejack Superstars.

Vroom vroom, says Alex Furlong, played by Emilio Estevez. He wants to race his cool, fast car in the big race in the year 1991, when, according to YouTube comments on old SNL clips, everything was perfect and there wasn't so much politics in the world. Before he can do that, though, Furlong has to encounter our first side character: his manager, Brad.

Portrayed by New York Dolls member David Johansen, aka Buster Poindexter, Brad is obviously a scumbag. But he's a manager — you kind of want your manager to be a scumbag. You can't take Manager as a class unless your Scumminess stat is at least a 6. When Brad introduces Furlong to a couple of executives before the race, Furlong blows them off. We're supposed to take this as evidence of his independent and free-willed nature, but it just makes him look like an asshole.

Meanwhile, in the far future of 2009, bonejacker Victor Vacendak is bulldozing the site of the old racetrack in preparation to rip Furlong into the terrible, post-Great Recession future of 2009. He's accompanied by his henchman, the aptly-named Ripper, who is our second Bill Kringle's Freejack Superstars!

Maybe you know him from Bad Boys or Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One. Maybe you're just wondering why he's wearing a single darkened lens. Is that how bad it gets in 2009, that the loyal goons of iconic rock frontmen can only purchase sunglasses one half at a time? Freejack never explains this, nor should it. But if they made a prequel today, a major plot point would be about how Ripper got his fucked up and terrible glasses.

Vacendak locks onto Furlong and catapults him through time just as his car crashes in a fiery wreck in 1991. He's supposed to be unconscious or braindead, but he's all too alive, so the doctors in the future convoy whip out the "lobotomizer."

Just when it looks like everything is going to end for Furlong without so much as an explanation, like a relationship suddenly cut short by a curt text message, a bomb goes off outside and he manages to escape after a trademark Estevez quip.

Furlong hails a cab and the driver immediately points a gun at him, demanding payment up front. When he sees Vacendak's crew in pursuit, he decides to just try and kill his fare instead.

Before we go any further, please visit actor Harsh Nayyar's charming website, which seems like it hasn't been updated in 20 years.

Furlong flees to Julie's building, but strangers are living there. They, too, pull a gun on him when they realize that he is a "Freejack," a term for those who escape temporal human trafficking by Mick Jagger. He learns he is in the year 2009 in the most elegant possible narrative manner: a giant billboard that tells him what year it is.

Desperate, confused and alone, Furlong breaks into a church and passes out on the altar. He is awoken by the angelic form of a nun, who greets him by, well, you can probably guess at this point.

Furlong is in over his head. One minute, he was in the idyllic world of 1991, which those SNL YouTube commenters are telling me "wasnt so woke bs and u could go to the mall and not be scared of the Tiktok gangs." The next, he's in 2009, where gun violence is omnipresent, billionaires want to steal your bones, and there are giant ads for suicide everywhere. Oh, fuck, we're living in the future of Freejack. Maybe those commenters had a point after all.

Thankfully, this nun hasn't forgotten the true meaning of 32 shopping days 'til Christmas and helps Furlong look up his old friend Brad after she learns he's a Freejack. Meanwhile, trouble is brewing as Vacendak visits an executive at the McCandless Corporation, which seems to be Freejack's equivalent of Weyland-Yutani or the Tyrell Corporation, only I don't think either of those ever hired a leather-clad rock musician as a bounty hunter. But I haven't seen the new Alien movie yet, maybe Billie Eilish shows up.

Jonathan Banks plays Michelette like the most aggrieved man in the world. Everything bores and irritates him, whether it's Vacendak failing to catch Furlong or Vacendak smashing his priceless Fabergé egg. He tells Vacendak he's off the case with all the dead-eyed energy of a police chief who just got a text message from his wife saying she's leaving him because he wouldn't stop pointing out the minor actors in a 1992 box office bomb starring Emilio Estevez.

Next, Furlong travels to Sector 7, a fucked-up urban battlefield that was known in his time as "Park Slope." Gunfights erupt out of nowhere. Giant breasts molded onto the sides of pre-war apartment buildings tempt passers-by with the promise of "3-D NUDES."

Here he is reunited with Brad, who has cleaned up his act in the intervening 18 years and become an upstanding member of society. Wait, no, he's unlocked hitherto unknown levels of scumbag.

Johansen is acting harder than anyone else in the movie here. There were moments during this scene in which he screams exposition at Estevez about how future people are too sick from drugs and pollution to be good replacement bodies for the rich when I was concerned that his face might actually fly off his skull.

Brad tells Furlong that Julie is living large in lower Manhattan, seemingly the only part of New York City that isn't on fire or future drugs. She is now a hotshot Japanese interpreter and negotiator working for Ian McCandless (Anthony Hopkins), so Brad takes Furlong to a diner to call her up and get them extracted from the hellscape that is one of the most expensive parts of Brooklyn. While he's on the phone, Furlong gets into a staring match with another patron.

I don't know why this character is in the movie. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he is. Brad calls him a "Marmaduke-looking moron," which alone justifies his existence. His arc is that he is very hungry and would like a meal. When Brad inevitably betrays Furlong and calls the cops on him to claim the bounty on his head, Hungry Diner's meal is disrupted by Brad knocking over his table. He then shoots Brad dead as Furlong escapes.

Then, just as he's about to enjoy a new plate of future slop, Furlong bursts back into the restaurant on a stolen police motorcycle, bowling him over again.

The relationship that was his meal up and left with a text message of splattering all over his face. Hungry Diner just can't catch a break. Arguably, neither could Tony Epper in his non-stunt work. His filmography includes titles like Hamburger: The Motion Picture, Alien from L.A., and Suburban Commando. At least he got a name in that last one. His name was "Teeth."

Furlong makes it to Manhattan and meets up with Julie, but she assumes that he's actually a billionaire inhabiting his body and calls security. He escapes in a champagne truck and dives off a bridge into the East River, where, waterlogged and half-dead, he meets a Very Special Bill Kringle's Freejack Superstar.

Eagle Man's purpose in Freejack is to offer Emilio Estevez some cooked river rat then give him a little pep talk about not giving up through an extended metaphor about an eagle. It is impossible to watch this scene now and not see it for what it is, a Black character serving as a prop to boost the ego of our White lead, but goddamn it, Frankie Faison really fucking makes a meal of his one scene in this flick. As Furlong runs off, reinvigorated by the homespun wisdom of this mystical hobo, Eagle Man says "you're not beat yet, Furlong." And sure, there are ads out for his capture, but how did he see them sitting under a bridge eating rats? Eagle Man is clearly meant to be God, or at least the embattled Spirit of America manifesting in human, rat-eating form.

By now, Julie's realized that Furlong is for real. She tracks him down in the slums with her assistant slash cyber-samurai bodyguard, Boone.

Grand L. Bush is having so much fun here. He carries a wakizashi sword with him at all times. He makes silly little jokes in the middle of pitched gun battles. Did you know he was Balrog in Street Fighter? Did you know that nearly ten years ago, he broke his silence on playing Balrog in Street Fighter? I adore him.

Julie takes Furlong to meet her friend Morgan, who she thinks can help him disappear. But it's not like Emilio Estevez needed help disappearing in the 2000s, am I right? Sorry, that was cruel. He voiced "Ferryman" in the English dub of Arthur and the Minimoys in 2006.

Furlong gets wasted off a single drink of future booze offered to him by a gay bartender from the mirror universe of Star Trek where everyone is evil. I defy you to find a better way to explain this guy's whole deal.

In his inebriated state, Furlong is confronted by a club reporter who quickly realizes she's stumbled onto her ticket out of interviewing morons who insist that the music brings us all together, man, when he immediately reveals his identity as a wanted Freejack.

But just as Vacendak's goons are closing in on Furlong's location, Julie's friend Morgan tosses a flash bomb and hauls his pathetic, drunken ass to safety.

Furlong's main concern when he meets Morgan is whether or not Julie's been fucking him in the 19 years he's been missing and presumed dead. John Shea, who is far too good for all of this, vanishes himself and Julie and Furlong sleep together, despite Julie being, in her words, "much older now." And, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, Bill Kringle's Freejack ends there, since Morgan is the last side character to be introduced in the movie.

You want to know what happens in the rest of the film? I mean, you can probably extrapolate from what's happened so far. Boone finally draws his ancient blade and kills someone with it before blowing himself up to buy Furlong some time to escape from Vacendak.

Furlong learns that Julie's boss McCandless, who is actually dead, has been the one trying to bonejack him the whole time. They meet up with him in his VR mind palace and he explains that it was all a big mistake. He did it because he was in love with Julie and expresses remorse for the pain and suffering he's caused, like an ex-lover explaining their actions on a phone call you still sometimes wish you'd get one day. But you'll never get it. You have to move on.

Anyway, like everyone else in the shitty future of Freejack, McCandless is a lying piece of shit. Furlong is trapped as Vacendak arrives and the movie ends up where we always knew it would, with Emilio Estevez and Anthony Hopkins having a crystal brain war.

Julie shoots the crystal midway through the Furlong-ectomy and it's unclear if the mind transfer was completed. Emilio Estevez tries his best to do an impression of Anthony Hopkins, but like someone looking up bit parts from an early '90s sci-fi thriller on IMDB in the middle of watching the movie with their romantic partner who is already secretly having doubts about the relationship, he's pressing his luck.

But, surprise! It turns out it's still Furlong in there. Vacendak finds out but lets him go anyway, having developed a grudging respect for his quarry over the course of their chase, and Furlong rides off into the sunset with Julie to enjoy the life of a billionaire. Will they use their newly-gained wealth to improve the hellish living conditions of 2009? We don't get into that.

What have we learned? Less than nothing. We have not grown or changed as people.