Freebie and the Bean

"Freebie and the Bean" is a buddy cop film which was successful in theaters and loved by many of its fans. I just thought it was pretty stupid and it certainly was NOT to my taste. The film is about two detectives, Freebie (James Caan) and Bean (Alan Arkin). In order to uphold law and order, they pretty much spend the entire film breaking laws and creating disorder. It's all meant to be a comedy and you get to see them beat up suspects, solicit bribes (demanding a sports jacket from a store or implying they'd close them down) and pretty much driving and acting like maniacs. Through the course of the film, you see one maniacal chase scene after another...complete with crashes and crashes and more crashes. For me, none of this seemed the least bit realistic nor made a lot of sense. At least with the "Lethal Weapon" films, they didn't make a lot of sense but they were funny...."Freebie and the Bean" wasn't. And, I just don't think time has been kind to this movie.

When you could poke fun at aything and laugh without repercussions... Amazing chemistry with Caan and Arkin... 70s at its best..

My Dad took me to see this in the theatre when I was 11 and we both loved it. For the last couple of decades my Dad has been asking me if I could find a copy so we could watch it again. I finally found a copy and we sat down to watch it after almost 45 years. My Dad was thrilled! We both really wanted to love it as much as we did in 1973. We didn't. Everything was way over the top! Brutally corny and ham-fisted. We watched about 15 minutes (I was prepared to suffer through the whole movie if necessary) when my Dad said, "Yah. Okay. This is crap", and I had to agree. We wanted to LOVE this movie. We had such great memories of seeing it in the theatre, yet we couldn't stand it for more than about 15 minutes.I was so relieved that he wanted to turn it off, but I was so disappointed that this movie wasn't what we remembered. If you watch this today and love it I really envy you. 10 out of 10, aged down to an unwatchable 1. Average: 5

Richard Rush directed this (intentionally?) uneven blend of comic-macho clumsiness and violent police action set in San Francisco. Two cops (well-cast buddy couple, Alan Arkin and James Caan) bust chops and wreck cars in an attempt to nab a numbers-racketeer. Rush is attracted to a messy visual style--cajoling comedy combined with bursts of bloody violence--yet the blood is cartoon-red, a signal to us this is all in good fun. One of the villains is an evil transvestite, another cue for derisive approval (villainous gays quickly became a lamentable cliché, coming right on the heels of murderous hippies). The leads are wired for self-detonation (was Rush trying to get them to emulate Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland from "MASH"?). Supporting cast is solid, with Valerie Harper exceptional in small role as Arkin's wife, and some of the comedy works, but much of the rest is decidedly off-putting. ** from ****

For what it is - a cop buddy movie - FREEBIE AND THE BEAN is the paragon. Violent action, high comedy, low humor, more car wrecks than a weekend with the Lohans, and something rare in any genre: two hours of genuine sympathy between grown men. Plus Alex Rocco. Alan Arkin and James Caan play cops in love, an un-ironic friendship displayed with banter and charisma. Mutual appreciation and respect is palpable in every scene. (This is even more impressive in light of Alan Arkin's public denigration of working with Richard Rush and this particular film-making experience generally.) They are aided by a Laurel & Hardy-meet-Lenny Bruce sensibility in the script and direction, which demands the extent of their abilities at the height of their powers. Gifted comedians both, Arkin and Caan invest the technical stuff - timing, delivery, physicality - with real emotion. It doesn't hurt that Robert Kaufman and Floyd Mutrux have given them wonderful things to say, and wonderful situations in which to say them. Richard Rush uses a lot of carnival music, and this is not his only evidence of carny taste. He likes to titillate, shock and amaze. That's all fine, as far as entertainment goes, but Rush has aspirations. Throughout his career he's made gestures to the absurd and surreal, with mixed results. His movies often seem giddy, his hand showing on purpose, pawing in self-reflexive gesture. This kind of trapeze act doesn't always work. THE STUNTMAN, for all its many virtues, does not pull off 100% of the tricks up its sleeve. Fellini and Fosse had a surer hand for that sort of detail. This movie aims lower and succeeds at just about every level, though careening on two wheels. The whole film feels just on the edge of out-of-control: the plot, the story, the action, all strain credibility. The cops kill people, destroy public and private property, bicker, donnybrook; the robbers preen, prance and pratfall. The jokes and the violence push the limits of good taste. And the guy on that trials bike isn't even trying to look like James Caan. But it's all part of the cuckoo world of Me Generation Hollywood, show biz kids drunk with power and roaring for approval. You can almost catch a buzz off all the cocaine blowing around the post-hippie pre-yuppie San Francisco set.

It's the antidote for The Laughing Policeman, that grim "police procedural" from 1973; it's Freebie and the Bean, a crude, politically incorrect, and very funny buddy movie for the sophomore in all of us. Alan Arkin and James Caan play a couple of San Francisco PD Inspectors on the hunt for . . . oh, who cares? The procedural part of the movie doesn't matter. The fun is in Arkin's neurotic and fastidious Bean (you have to forgive the racial slur right from the start) and Caan decked out in a leisure suit and looking for the next "five-finger discount" (hence, the name "Freebie"). It's clearly not a movie for your mom--violent and foul-mouthed, with Arkin accusing his wife of infidelity by demanding to see if she's douched recently, and Caan performing noisy cunnilingus on his girlfriend. It all seems so daring for the 17 year old in 1975, but now, I suspect, I would just cringe and blush at the crudity and concentrate on the hostile chemistry between Arkin and Caan. After so many serious cop-dramas from the early '70s, FATB came across as something of a breath of different air. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a good movie or a nice one, but there is an entertainment value and a vitality that makes it worth watching. And don't miss the cop car through the side of the apartment building!

Overlong, over the top buddy-cop action comedy stars James Caan and Alan Arkin as a thoroughly dysfunctional pair of San Francisco police detectives. Caan plays Freebie, Arkin is the Bean. They're so stubbornly determined to nail mafia bigwigs in the city - among them, numbers racketeer Red Meyers (Jack Kruschen) - that they throw all caution to the wind. They also leave a huge trail of destruction in their wake, getting involved in numerous intense chases. "Freebie and the Bean" will still be somewhat refreshing for some members of the audience due to Freebies' Archie Bunker-style humour. The decidedly un-P.C. script is by Robert Kaufman, based on a story by executive producer Floyd Mutrux. Richard Rush of "The Stunt Man" fame produces and directs, and the movie is at its liveliest when it comes to the vehicular carnage. Charles Bail is the stunt coordinator and second unit director, and his action scenes are amazing. Viewers will love the car-through-the-wall gag (and the corresponding deadpan reactions of an old couple in an apartment). Caan and Arkin are energetic as they constantly bicker and banter with each other; the problem for this viewer, though, was that the script is never really that funny; it's seriously lacking in real wit. There are some good actors in the supporting cast. Other than Kruschen, we have Alex Rocco as an uptight district attorney, John Garwood as the dopey chauffeur, Paul Koslo (having yet another bad hair day) as criminal lowlife Whitey, and Valerie Harper in a delightful cameo playing Beans' wife. Mike Kellin (as our heroes' superior) and Loretta Swit (as Meyers' wife), unfortunately, end up with very little to do. An uncredited Evel Knievel plays a motorcyclist. The opening sequence definitely sets a tone, as Freebie and the Bean take Meyers' garbage and actually empty it into their own car in order to search it. Five out of 10.

Hollywood has made hundreds of hyper-violent cop buddy pics at this point by 2019. Some well-known and high-grossing, if mostly intellectually bereft. there are all sorts of combos: Black cop/racist Aussie midget. Black cop/Asian martial artist. White cop/black convict. etc. All full of pointless shooting and stupid wisecracks. And cartoonish bad guys. Freebie and the Bean is sort of a prototype early version, where you see the template but Hollywood hadn't quite perfected the formula. Being in a new genre, Caan and Arkin don't really know what they're doing. They have almost zero chemistry. And their methods make Det. Harry Callahan look like a school resource officer.

When you combine hard and violent action with yuk-yuk humor, you are going to get very strange results. It's watchable, but you'll certainly find the tone of the movie weird. The way one homosexual character is treated will be offensive to many people, especially near the end of the movie. The scene where one of the cops, confronting his wife about his suspicions of her cheating on him, is a comic highlight.

The Daddy of 'em all. The original & still the best. Arkin & Caan are on top form as (you saw it here first) mis-matched, loose-cannon cops, who leave a trail of destruction (oh, beautiful destruction!) in their wake. With it being the 70's, the language is somewhat 'colourful', which just adds to Caan's character. Foul-mouthed 70's cops, don't you just love 'em? The stunts are top-notch and spectacular, not to mention highly original and almost comic book (The car pile-up scene & 'that' scene where they crash the car) Rush's direction is excellent as well. He only made this because he couldn't get 'The Stunt Man' off the ground! (which is another corker) Altogether an very, VERY enjoyable romp (COP-romp, that is) The film was virtually remade as Lethal weapon 4 (not to mention 1, 2 & 3!) My favourite scene is the ludicrous fight in the restaurant kitchen, where Rush must've just said 'try to destroy everything you can in this scene, boys'. Which they did. Brilliant.