On April 30, 1992, Freejack debuted in Germany.

Here's some new Amanda Plummer art!

So I found out today that Eric Red, the guy that wrote Near Dark and The Hitcher, penned a serial numbers filed off version of The Wild Bunch (with a dash of Hill's The Long Riders) for HBO Pictures back in the early 90s. Sports a crazy cast -- Mickey Rourke! Dermot Mulroney! Ted Levine! Steve Buscemi! The bad guy from Death Wish 3! Keith David playing a character named Lovecraft! -- and was directed by Geoff Murphy, he of Freejack and Under Siege 2: Dark Territory fame! (And yes, The Quiet Earth, which was quite good.) As you can see, full movie's up on YouTube.

Hey, it’s another circle post.

The Quiet Earth • Director Geoff Murphy

Tonight will pay for my dress and and then some.

Geoff Murphy for PRHBTN

Lexington, KY

The Quiet Earth (1985)

"We might not have been responsible. God may have just blinked."

"God blinked and the whole world disappeared. A world of noisy, brawling, wonderful human beings."

The Quiet Earth (1985, Geoff Murphy)

2/20/23

Freejack (1992)

While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...

I was under the impression that Freejack has some sort of cult following and that a number of people consider it a film that’s “so bad it’s good”. I need to reconsider my sources. Dull, contrived and predictable, I won’t remember a thing about this movie within a week.

Just as Alex Furlong (Emilio Estevez) is about to crashnhis car, he is stolen from the year 1991 and transported to 2009 (!). In this futuristic dystopia, people from the past who were about to die - and therefore wouldn't be missed - have their minds wiped and replaced with that of clients who pay top dollars for a new body. Now on the run from mercenary Victor Vacendak (Mick Jagger), Alex searches for his girlfriend Julie (Rene Russo), but can he trust a woman who hasn’t seen him in 18 years?

You might spot a major hole in this premise but to give Freejack credit, it explains why the 1% of 2009 need to steal bodies from the past. To me, this only makes the movie worse. If there were holes in the future tech or logic of this 1992 action thriller (I think that’s what it’s supposed to be), it might stand out. Currently, the only noteworthy aspect of Freejack is the cast. Why Mick Jagger as the honor-bound mercenary? Why Anthony Hopkins as Julie’s boss (who definitely isn’t up to something)? I guess you can have fun pointing out the art direction’s obsession with jacks (not the car kind, but the metal thingies you grab after bouncing a rubber ball on the ground). Does that sound worth the time you’ll spend bored?

The film is full of missed opportunities. Alex is an ace Formula One driver. He's only goes on a single high-speed car chase. The idea of being displaced in time also doesn’t get mined as much as it should. There is merit to the concept if you put some thought into the plot. It seems neither director Geoff Murphy nor writers Steven Pressfield, Ronal Shusett or Dan Gilroy had any ambition to do so.

There’s little else to say about Freejack. It’s an unremarkable picture. The most interesting thing about it are it’s then-futuristic 2009 setting, trippy & dated special effects and seemingly random cast in a lame film. (February 9, 2018)

On March 27, 1992 Freejack debuted in the United Kingdom.

The Quiet Earth (1985)

6/10

Movie Review | Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (Murphy, 1995)

I understand in the pre-internet era, you had to put in actual work if you wanted to look at naked people. For example, you had to leave the house and purchase or rent pornography. And if you didn't have any such shops in your area, you had to use the superpowered camera on a top secret military satellite to zoom in on a topless woman. The latter is something that happens in this movie. To be fair, we do get a brief attempt to saying something about cultural misogyny when the sole woman in the CIA control room expresses disdain and then gets hit on by some creep, which would feel a lot more sincere were we not in a fucking Steven Seagal movie.

I will say that Seagal himself comes off as credibly non-skeevy in his interactions with his niece Katherine Heigl, although their heart to heart is shot in the same style as the dramatic closeups in the first Under Siege, flatteringly framed and with a bizarre amount of shadows despite them being in a train car with lots of windows during the daytime. Real acting powerhouse, this scene is. This attempts the same gambit as the original by populating the movie with actual actors, but the result is less successful. Morris Chestnut gets the thankless role of Seagal's goofy, fast talking sidekick and struggles mightily as Seagal gives him absolutely nothing to work with. The brief scene he has with a low level baddie played by Peter Greene is easily his best as it's the one chance he has to play off somebody who can act. Bleach blonde Everett McGill is effective as the evil black ops guy, but plays things too one note and doesn't get to be fun and weird until it's much too late. And Eric Bogosian seems to be having fun doing a discount Jeff Goldblum, but it really sinks in how important physicality and movement are to a performance, as he's stuck sitting or standing in front of a computer for the entire movie and as a result his performance feels strangely inert.

As you can tell from the poster, this largely takes place on a train, but don't be fooled into thinking it's about Seagal getting stuck alone on a train that gets derailed and everybody celebrates. And also don't be fooled by the sight of the satellite early on that this is about Seagal getting stuck alone in a spaceship that loses contact with Mission Control and everybody celebrates. You can only pull an Executive Decision so many times. Anyway, it probably would be too expensive to shoot the entire movie on an actual moving train, so we get a lot of what looks like either greenscreen or rear projection, which makes it look like an underbudgeted TV show or an FMV game. The movie feels bizarrely cheap, despite the budget being bigger than the first one. And a passenger train is just not an interesting environment. The first movie was set on a naval ship and used it to its full advantage, taking every opportunity to use the coloured lights, the hissing steam, the protrusions from the walls to add visual interest and shape the action scenes in engaging ways. Here, the interior of the train offers little visual spice, and the cramped framings necessitated by the setting are very obviously intended to hide Seagal's slipping athleticism. The combined package just feels super lame.

I will say that when the movie bothers to use exterior shots, it does look pretty nice, there are satisfying bone crunching moments and squib-heavy deaths, and the Basil Poledouris is rousing enough. If those and the mere sight of (underused) character actors are enough for you, then maybe this is worth a look.

“Who’s this?” Nancy cooed, rubbing Bull’s happy big head. He panted and wagged his tail in delight.

“I didn’t invite you over to make friends with my dog.”

“Sorry, buddy, mama’s gotta pay the bills,” she said to Bull.