by Moe Zilla

Created on: January 29, 2008

"Freejack" starts with a ridiculous premise. In the future a ruthless corporation is snatching bodies from the present to host the transplanted minds of the sick but wealthy. But this wild idea raises the stakes for the movie's characters, and creates a genuinely creepy atmosphere.

30-year-old Emilio Estevez plays the crucial victim, a race car driver believed dead who awakens and escapes before the corporation can complete the mind transplant. The man who wants his body is played by Anthony Hopkins (just one year after playing the villainous Hannibal Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs.") Hopkins plays the head of the wicked corporation, and since his body has recently died, he's doubly determined to re-capture the young fugitive. This keeps the tension going, as Estevez realizes he must face this dogged and unrelenting pursuit.

But it's Mick Jagger who steals the show, playing the gleefully ruthless security chief who's leading the chase. Jagger's face does most of the acting, conveying determination and disappointment with its dark, unsmiling expression (and his immense, pouting lips). Jagger isn't a great actor, and unfortunately, the script gives his character some of the key moments in the plot. Estevez spends most of the movie reacting woodenly to the fact that he's being chased, and at one moment he's been captured and is facing certain doom. And then Jagger's character suddenly announces that he wants the chase to continue, and he'll give him a head start. He closes his eyes as though playing hide-and-go-seek, and actually begins counting off the seconds by saying "One Mississippi, two Mississippi..."

In an even more improbable plot twist, the race car driver's fiance is still alive, and still remembers him after 18 years. It's a lucky twist, since she just so happens to work for that same corporation which is chasing him. Rene Russo gives this strange plot a reasonably credible performance. But what the movie lacks in acting and believability, it makes up for with the audacity of its plot.

The standard movie chase scene is a lot more fun when it's set in the future. Impossibly, Estevez's character finds his way around the city, dealing with futuristic cars and futuristic security systems. (Along with futuristic guns!) This is one of those movies that can only be enjoyed if you promise not to think too much while watching it. If the producers say this is how the hero escaped in the "future" of 2009, you've just got to roll with it.

And if that doesn't work, you can always enjoy making fun of the actors.

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.