Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And boy, we have got
Speaker 3: a treat for you today, one that has been a
Speaker 3: long time coming for me personally, because we're going to
Speaker 3: be talking about a nineteen ninety Oh I've already forgotten
Speaker 3: the year. Was it ninety one or ninety two?
Speaker 2: I believe it came out in ninety.
Speaker 3: Two, Okay, a nineteen ninety two science fiction film called
Speaker 3: Free Jack. And I have a personal history with this movie,
Speaker 3: which is that I have owned this DVD for approximately
Speaker 3: fifteen years, and until this weekend, I had never watched it.
Speaker 3: I remember buying it for three dollars and ninety five
Speaker 3: cents at an East Tennessee used bookstore sometime when I
Speaker 3: was in college. Because on the cover of the DVD
Speaker 3: case it has a picture of Emilio Estevez holding some
Speaker 3: kind of futuristic looking gun, and then a bunch of
Speaker 3: very very foggy future corridors, and then Mick Jagger looking
Speaker 3: very stern like he's going to dole out some punishment.
Speaker 3: Anthony Hopkins holding his fingers in front of his face
Speaker 3: like he's going to smoke a cigar or something, and
Speaker 3: Renee Russo wearing like an mc escher pattern.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember the VHS box art for this. I
Speaker 2: remember the the you know, the covers. I remember the trailer.
Speaker 2: It looks like it's going to be tremendous fun. It
Speaker 2: looks really badass. In fact, I have a very strong
Speaker 2: memories of when this came out, because I was fourteen,
Speaker 2: and you know, I don't even remember what my favorite
Speaker 2: films were at that point. You know, I guess that's
Speaker 2: post Batman, so I guess Batman was still in the mix.
Speaker 2: But I was, you know, exploring some more sci fi,
Speaker 2: getting into that reading sci fi, and then I saw
Speaker 2: the trailer for free Jack, and I was just convinced
Speaker 2: that this was going to be a great film. I
Speaker 2: got so excited about it. I'm like look through copies
Speaker 2: of Newsweek to try and follow the coverage of free Jack,
Speaker 2: and that was a little just pointed when it was there.
Speaker 3: You're like making a scrap book.
Speaker 2: I would do that with other films, like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: had done that with Batman. When it came out, I
Speaker 2: was like cutting out all these pictures on me, like
Speaker 2: scrapbook pages of it. I was so excited about it.
Speaker 2: I did that with Dick Tracy.
Speaker 3: That's fandom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And and then this came and I'm like, let's
Speaker 2: do it. I'm down. This is the next one. This
Speaker 2: is going to be the next film that I'm crazy for.
Speaker 2: And then it hit theaters and I remember I was
Speaker 2: I was calling my local theater in the small Tennessee
Speaker 2: town that I lived in, and I was like, when
Speaker 2: are you all getting free Jack? When's free Jack coming?
Speaker 2: And they they didn't have an answer for that, because
Speaker 2: of course the answer was free Jack was not coming
Speaker 2: to a small town.
Speaker 3: Is mister Jagger going to be here for the premiere?
Speaker 3: Can I get him to sign my poster?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, I just thought it was going to be
Speaker 2: this huge thing that everybody was going to be obsessed with.
Speaker 2: Turns out people weren't obsessed with it. Turns out this
Speaker 2: was what a January release. This was a film that
Speaker 2: had experienced troubles, that was pretty much known, I think,
Speaker 2: to not be that good, and was just dumped unceremoniously
Speaker 2: in the January release window of nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 3: Yeah. FLOPAGEXT season, Yeah, so there's a lot of good
Speaker 3: movies get released in the winter, though, Oh yeah, a
Speaker 3: lot of this is something that I think often happens
Speaker 3: with horror movies that should be released in October. But
Speaker 3: there's just a sign of utter disrespect by the studios
Speaker 3: that release them, often good ones. I don't know if
Speaker 3: the studio is playing into it in this case, but
Speaker 3: like when The Witch came out, I think it was
Speaker 3: released in February or something just utterly inexplicable. Why not
Speaker 3: in October?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I you know, as much as
Speaker 2: I love movies and I love charting all this stuff, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't have as good a head for other aspects
Speaker 2: of movie production, and you know, and certainly the calendar
Speaker 2: of putting them out another thing I don't usually have
Speaker 2: a good head for. I usually don't get obsessed with
Speaker 2: the budget some things, but sometimes it's notable, and I
Speaker 2: was checking this one out, I did notice that this
Speaker 2: was a thirty million dollar picture, which my understanding is
Speaker 2: that that was still quite a chunk of change for
Speaker 2: a film in nineteen ninety one, nineteen ninety two, So
Speaker 2: this was a this was a big budget affair, and
Speaker 2: certainly when we start getting into the connections. A lot
Speaker 2: of names were involved in this picture. Oh yeah, so
Speaker 2: this may be the most expensive film that we've yet
Speaker 2: covered on Weird House Cinema. This was this was a
Speaker 2: mainstream shot. This was something that was born to be
Speaker 2: a blockbuster, but it just didn't happen.
Speaker 3: This is a parade of heavy hitters, both in terms
Speaker 3: of a list stars. You had Emilio Estevez, who was,
Speaker 3: you know, a big deal in the early nineties. He
Speaker 3: had Renee Russo, Anthony Hopkins, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones.
Speaker 3: But then also it's just filled out with a ton
Speaker 3: of great character actors in the in the mid level roles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think everybody's necessarily cast in a good spot.
Speaker 2: Right by the end of this episode, I will recast
Speaker 2: the picture in way that I think will work better
Speaker 2: or would have worked better. But yeah, it's it's still
Speaker 2: a very fun picture to discuss, has a lot of
Speaker 2: cool elements in it, just everything didn't come together like
Speaker 2: it should.
Speaker 3: No see this one's I think it's gonna be a
Speaker 3: lot of fun to talk about. Ultimately, I think it's
Speaker 3: a little disappointing to actually watch and one of the
Speaker 3: main reasons is the weirdness and the absurdity is not
Speaker 3: concentrated enough. This the movie goes on too long. It's
Speaker 3: stretched out too much. But we'll try to press it
Speaker 3: down into a diamond for you. The listener.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's let's go ahead and have that
Speaker 2: elevator pitch.
Speaker 3: Joe, Okay, So the pitch is in the early nineties,
Speaker 3: Formula one racer Alex Furlong is about to die in
Speaker 3: a fiery crash when he is suddenly time warped into
Speaker 3: the dystopian hell of the year two thousand and nine
Speaker 3: by mercenaries under the command of Mick Jagger a guy
Speaker 3: named Visindak, and they want to sell his body to
Speaker 3: a rich dead man who's currently living inside a computer
Speaker 3: and needs a new meat vehicle so that he can
Speaker 3: live forever and achieve his dreams. But before the transfer
Speaker 3: to the new meat vehicle can take place, for long
Speaker 3: escapes and now he is what is referred to in
Speaker 3: the future as a free jack, and he spends the
Speaker 3: rest of the movie running around, being chased by Mick
Speaker 3: Jagger and trying to put the pieces together.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: Now, before we get into the contents of the film, itself.
Speaker 3: This movie really does have something that I love, which
Speaker 3: is a good, crappy, early two thousands DVD menu experience.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In fact, I was just talking to Seth before
Speaker 3: we started recording about how someday, someday, I almost want
Speaker 3: to do a whole exploration just of the genre of
Speaker 3: early DVD menus that tried to do too much and
Speaker 3: were really esthetically repulsive and had strange sort of CGI animations.
Speaker 3: One of my favorites is the DVD menu for the
Speaker 3: movie Leviathan, which has exactly one animation, and it's just
Speaker 3: like a guy in a diving suit who sort of
Speaker 3: like does a half turned step and then pivots back
Speaker 3: to his original position and then does that over and
Speaker 3: over forever.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. Yeah, I mean even the ones that were
Speaker 2: really well done, Like I think one of the first
Speaker 2: DVDs I bought, and I wasn't an early adopter on
Speaker 2: that technology, but I picked up this double DVD special
Speaker 2: edition of Big Trouble and Little China, the John Conner film,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it was. They really put a lot of
Speaker 2: effort into it. You know, it's like so many different
Speaker 2: extra features, a lot of cool extra features. But then
Speaker 2: at times you're just kind of waiting for the graphics
Speaker 2: to stop doing things so you can actually push play
Speaker 2: on the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so this one, it has these crappy CGI menus.
Speaker 3: One of the features it has is a rotating CGI
Speaker 3: jack like in the Game of Jacks. And I was
Speaker 3: confused at first, because again I despite owning the CVD
Speaker 3: for like fifteen years or something, I had never seen
Speaker 3: it until this weekend. So I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: does the title free Jack refer to some kind of
Speaker 3: jack like in Jack's.
Speaker 2: Oh this is this? This would be the what's it
Speaker 2: called the spiritual Uh? Yeah, god? What they call it?
Speaker 3: The spiritual the spiritual switchboard? Spiritual switchboard? Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: So it's a piece of technology that actually shows up
Speaker 3: at the end of the movie and looks exactly like
Speaker 3: a Jack from a Game of Jacks.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I just realized as a Jack. Was that
Speaker 2: on purpose?
Speaker 3: I don't know, like with the title free Jack? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know. But then there's another thing on this
Speaker 3: DVD that was just cavir on my tongue. It was
Speaker 3: a menu option called Experience our Website, which when you
Speaker 3: click it, all it does is it takes you to
Speaker 3: a screen that shows you the URL of Morgan Creek
Speaker 3: Motion Pictures, which is www dot morgan Creek dot com.
Speaker 3: And then you have the option to go back to
Speaker 3: the main menu.
Speaker 2: So you you would have to like write it down
Speaker 2: on the set to pay take it to your computer. Wow,
Speaker 2: so good.
Speaker 3: Anyway, let's hit some trailer audio.
Speaker 4: Alex Furlong is about to die and enter the year
Speaker 4: two thousand and nine, where immortality is only a heartbeat away,
Speaker 4: where money can buy anything.
Speaker 2: Shouldn't you consider an alternative body?
Speaker 4: Sorry to deceive you, including life itself, lose your mind
Speaker 4: and you can live forever.
Speaker 3: Free Jack.
Speaker 2: See sounds exciting, sounds great, sounds like it's gonna be
Speaker 2: one heck of a movie.
Speaker 3: Right. If you'd been a kid at the time, you'd
Speaker 3: be writing your local theaters saying, make the free Jack
Speaker 3: World premiere happen here. But so, there are some key
Speaker 3: concepts in the film that we're going to have to
Speaker 3: explain now, I think for this discussion to make any sense,
Speaker 3: And one of the distinctions that is most important is
Speaker 3: that between the bone jack and the bone Jacker and
Speaker 3: the free Jack. Right.
Speaker 2: So essentially, again, the whole idea here is people who
Speaker 2: died in horrific accidents in the past. A lot of
Speaker 2: times you know exactly when they died, where they died,
Speaker 2: and you know that there's like a catastrophic event like
Speaker 2: in this case a car wreck, a race car wreck,
Speaker 2: so you know exactly where in time and space to
Speaker 2: reach back and steal their body, in other words, jack
Speaker 2: their bones. It's called bone jacking, and the people who
Speaker 2: do it are bone jackers.
Speaker 3: Right, So they're bone jackers. And the person who gets
Speaker 3: bone jacked from the past to the future to become
Speaker 3: somebody's meat vehicle, that person is the bone bone jack.
Speaker 2: Okay did they call them that? I thought maybe they
Speaker 2: were just jacks, but they're called bone jacks.
Speaker 3: I think they're called bone jacks. So the victim is
Speaker 3: the bone jack. The verb would be to bone jack someone.
Speaker 3: And then if you're one of these mercenaries who does
Speaker 3: the bone jacking, you're a bone jacker.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: But then if a bone jack gets loose, then all
Speaker 3: bets are off and they're a free jack. Right, It's
Speaker 3: like being a free agent.
Speaker 2: So then they have to try and either jack the
Speaker 2: free jack or bone jack the free jack in order
Speaker 2: to get them back, right.
Speaker 3: For the bone jack Yes, yes, okay, that's right. But
Speaker 3: I was thinking about, Okay, so the people who who
Speaker 3: are the prime candidates for bone jacking in the premise
Speaker 3: of this film are It's basically going to be anyone
Speaker 3: who died on videotape with like a precise time code
Speaker 3: and so you know the time and place where they died,
Speaker 3: and that's well recorded and survives into the future. So
Speaker 3: I realized, like, oh, probably all of the people who
Speaker 3: are who are first in line to get bone jacked
Speaker 3: are the people from the faces of death videos.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they don't actually die, right, Sometimes that stuff's fake.
Speaker 3: Right. Oh really, I've never actually watched one. I just
Speaker 3: remember that was the thing when I was in high
Speaker 3: school or whatever this is if you don't remember, these
Speaker 3: were like morbid video cassettes of just like footage of
Speaker 3: people dying in various ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess it does help if it
Speaker 2: is a case where something blows up, because then there's more,
Speaker 2: it's less mystery of the body suddenly vanishes, you know,
Speaker 2: right before they would die.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think there'd still be a mystery. They
Speaker 3: establish in this movie that there's a mystery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's a difference between Okay, there was a
Speaker 2: car wreck and we never found the body to somebody
Speaker 2: fired a bullet at JFK and then he vanished, you know,
Speaker 2: and then it turns out he was bonejacked and now
Speaker 2: is a body for some like super rich dude in
Speaker 2: the future. Like that just doesn't make any sense. That
Speaker 2: would be a huge incident.
Speaker 3: Okay. So the film was directed by a guy named
Speaker 3: Jeff Murphy who is a New Zealand film director who
Speaker 3: passed away in twenty eighteen. His breakout film seems to
Speaker 3: have been a New Zealand road trip movie that I've
Speaker 3: never seen, called Goodbye pork Pie. But he had a
Speaker 3: Hollywood period in which he directed films like Young Guns two,
Speaker 3: which I didn't check, but I'm pretty sure that does
Speaker 3: star Emelio Estevez.
Speaker 2: It is yeah, it is ail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So connection there, Young Guns two in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: Free Jack in ninety two, so you can see the
Speaker 3: connection there. But then he also directed a prestige period
Speaker 3: drama I think about the Regency period known as Under
Speaker 3: Siege two, Dark Territory in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: I've seen that one. That one has a terrible lead,
Speaker 2: but has has some really talented people in it, because
Speaker 2: Eric Bogosian plays the main villain. And then I want
Speaker 2: to say, you have.
Speaker 3: Who's Eric Bogosian? I've heard that name.
Speaker 2: Oh, Eric Bogosian. He's been in a ton of stuff.
Speaker 2: You've definitely seen him in things. I think he was in, well,
Speaker 2: most recently he was in Uncut Gems. But he's been
Speaker 2: in a ton of stuff.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was in another Regency or a drama, Charlie's
Speaker 3: Angels full Throttle, and he was a voice. I just
Speaker 3: looked this up. He was a voice in Beavis and
Speaker 3: butthead Do America.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, there you go. He's an impressive actor, I
Speaker 2: would say. But yeah, so I saw that movie. It
Speaker 2: also had Steven Seagal on it, of course, but yeah,
Speaker 2: what can you do?
Speaker 3: But Jeff Murphy was also a second unit director for
Speaker 3: some big, you know, mainstream films, like like Peter Jackson's
Speaker 3: Lord of the Rings trilogy. He did second unit stuff.
Speaker 3: He did Dante's Peak, Triple X, State of the Union.
Speaker 2: All right, So yeah, he had a pretty solid career. Now,
Speaker 2: one thing about this film, this is something I didn't
Speaker 2: realize back in the day when I originally watched it
Speaker 2: and it was just kind of a creeping realization as
Speaker 2: I was watching it just the other day, and it
Speaker 2: is that this was filmed I think, entirely in Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 2: in the city in which we live, the city that
Speaker 2: we're recording this episode.
Speaker 3: In and around. Like you saw Peachtree in it, didn't
Speaker 3: you do you recognize suddenly when they're downtown and they're like,
Speaker 3: there's Morta stations and.
Speaker 2: Well, by that point I had looked it up. But
Speaker 2: early on in the film, there's just a lot of
Speaker 2: like you're in two thousand and nine, it's in the future,
Speaker 2: and everything's like kind of gritty and industrial in a
Speaker 2: way that plenty of parts of Atlanta still are. So
Speaker 2: I was kind of thinking it was like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of an Atlanta feel to it, and then
Speaker 2: I'm like, wait, I should look this up, and sure enough,
Speaker 2: filmed in Atlanta. Of course, nowadays everything's filmed in Atlanta
Speaker 2: or filmed in Georgia, so it doesn't really mean anything.
Speaker 2: But you know, back in the day, there weren't that
Speaker 2: many films filming in Atlanta, so it's kind of notable.
Speaker 3: This one has some of the exact same locations and
Speaker 3: streets featured in Baby Driver. Yeah, like you could. You
Speaker 3: could compare Free Jack and Baby Driver and do some
Speaker 3: side by sides.
Speaker 2: Like they went to film Baby Driver and they're like, look,
Speaker 2: we'll give you the free Jack package. This is what
Speaker 2: it consists of.
Speaker 3: You know, another dystopian future movie that uses Morta stations.
Speaker 3: There were cut scenes from Escape from New York that
Speaker 3: were filmed in Morta stations in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Of course the High Museum here in Atlanta
Speaker 2: is famously where doctor Hannah Lecter was housed in Manhunter,
Speaker 2: the original adaptation of Red Dragon.
Speaker 3: M h Yeah, so played by Brian Cox.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, a tremendous role. That was a really really
Speaker 2: fun film, as I recall. But of course nowadays everything
Speaker 2: is filmed around Atlanta, so it's it can be excruciating
Speaker 2: at times. I find like I'm watching Cobra Kai and
Speaker 2: they film like all of it in Atlanta, like everywhere,
Speaker 2: Like I expect to see myself see out of my
Speaker 2: own house and take out the garbage in the background
Speaker 2: in a scene, you know, so I don't know, it
Speaker 2: kind of takes me out of the experience sometimes these days.
Speaker 2: But it's fun with these older films for some reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this was actually based on a novel, I think,
Speaker 3: but maybe loosely based.
Speaker 2: Yes, the novel very loosely based on a novel by
Speaker 2: Robert Sheckley. He lived nineteen twenty eight through two thousand
Speaker 2: and five, and it was quite successful. The book in
Speaker 2: question was nineteen fifty eight Immortality, Inc. And originally I
Speaker 2: didn't have time to read any of this book. But
Speaker 2: originally the trans is from nineteen fifty eight to the
Speaker 2: year twenty one to ten, so much further in the
Speaker 2: into the future.
Speaker 3: But anyway, Yeah, by shortening that length though, that that
Speaker 3: dramatically changes what's possible with the plot in terms of
Speaker 3: meeting people who you previously knew and not appearing to
Speaker 3: have aged a single day in between.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's supposedly a good book. I'd love to
Speaker 2: hear from anyone out there who's read it. I read
Speaker 2: that it, you know, it doesn't again, doesn't have much
Speaker 2: to do with this movie. I don't think the terms
Speaker 2: free jacker, bonejacker used it all in the book, and
Speaker 2: I think there's supposedly a sequence in it where a
Speaker 2: guy the main character, gets in line for something and
Speaker 2: then finds out it's a suicide booth, which of course
Speaker 2: is a gag in Futurama in the first episode of that, right,
Speaker 2: but yeah, so very loosely based on a novel. Also,
Speaker 2: there are a number of people that are credited on
Speaker 2: the screenplay for this, and we'll get back to one
Speaker 2: in a bit, but one of the people is Ronald Shuse,
Speaker 2: who worked with Dan O'Bannon on Alien and Total Recall.
Speaker 3: Ah, two great sci fi scripts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, now we've got our lead. Our star,
Speaker 2: Emilio Estevez plays the character Alex Furlong. Now, Estevez is,
Speaker 2: of course the nephew of noted B movie icon Joe Stevez.
Speaker 3: And do you lead with that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I mean he's also the son of acting
Speaker 2: legend Martin Sheen, whose, of course real name is Ramon Estevez.
Speaker 2: So if you weren't aware of that, like Martin Sheen,
Speaker 2: that's his Hollywood name, his real name is Estevez. H
Speaker 2: And yeah, so you know Martin Sheen from stuff like
Speaker 2: Apocalypse Now or Spawn. He's been in everything.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking how funny it was that you
Speaker 3: don't you don't often put it together in your brain,
Speaker 3: or at least I don't that like Martin Sheen, who
Speaker 3: played the President on the West Wing, who's this kind
Speaker 3: of like grumpy but kind, irascible fatherly figure he's presented
Speaker 3: as this lovable nerd. Is also the main character from
Speaker 3: Apocalypse Now and the villain from Spawn.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, he's been in so many different types
Speaker 2: of films. He's been in some crap, you know, not
Speaker 2: as much as Joe Estevez, but you know, but he
Speaker 2: was in some really great films, especially early in his career.
Speaker 2: Nineteen seventy Three's bad Lands by Terrence Malick, wonderful picture.
Speaker 3: Emilia Estevez was was, I guess, pretty young at the
Speaker 3: time this was filmed. I don't know exactly how he
Speaker 3: was in his twenties, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure, but he was. Certainly he was
Speaker 2: chugging right along. I mean, he'd been in the Breakfast Club,
Speaker 2: the Young Guns, films, Repoman, a true cult classic, the
Speaker 2: Mighty Ducks that came later, I guess, and then of
Speaker 2: course he was in Maximum Overdrive, So you know, he's
Speaker 2: been I think this was a movie that came out
Speaker 2: at a time when he was very much the sort
Speaker 2: of name you would put ahead of Mick Jagger on
Speaker 2: a film.
Speaker 3: That's pretty weird. So, of course, the thing that mainly
Speaker 3: drew me into this when I picked it up at
Speaker 3: the used bookstore was that it stars Mick Jagger, and
Speaker 3: I had no idea Mick Jagger had ever been in
Speaker 3: a movie at this time. Of course, Mick Jagger the
Speaker 3: lead singer of the Rolling Stones. I was so my
Speaker 3: mind was so rendered by the idea of him being
Speaker 3: in a movie at all. I wonder if that sort
Speaker 3: of prevented me from watching it in the years in between,
Speaker 3: because I was almost kind of scared to find out
Speaker 3: what it was like.
Speaker 2: Like, you were afraid that his performance would just be
Speaker 2: so good that it would change you on a fundamental level.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how can you really make informed decisions about transformative change?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so. Yeah, Mick Jagger's presence in this film
Speaker 2: is interesting. Mick Jagger is I think you would call
Speaker 2: him an intermittent actor at best. You look him up
Speaker 2: on IMDb, and most of his film credits are himself
Speaker 2: in concert footage. Yeah, but when he does act, when
Speaker 2: he has acted, it's been all over the place. So
Speaker 2: his first screen role was the lead in nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: Ned Kelly, which I haven't seen it, but it does
Speaker 2: seem very much like, Hey, we got this young fella here.
Speaker 2: He's the front man of this popular band. Let's put
Speaker 2: him in a movie. And then in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 2: he was in a film called Laughter in the Dark,
Speaker 2: based on a book by Navakov that I haven't read.
Speaker 2: Are you familiar with this one?
Speaker 3: I think I've heard of it, but I've never read it, Okay.
Speaker 2: And then in nineteen ninety seven he was in an
Speaker 2: adaptation of Bent, which based on the play by Martin Sherman.
Speaker 2: This is about the persecution of homosexuals doing the Third Reich,
Speaker 2: you know, very very serious, very stirring piece of drama.
Speaker 2: And then he'll still occasionally act in things seemingly when
Speaker 2: the mood hits him. But I think this is this
Speaker 2: may be free Jack maybe one of the few, like
Speaker 2: really like big budget kind of action films that he
Speaker 2: pops up in. And I don't think he really has
Speaker 2: another appearance in his career like.
Speaker 3: This, well, because one was enough, clearly. I mean, his
Speaker 3: role in this film changed him, It changed the world,
Speaker 3: I would say, probably my Well, I don't know. There
Speaker 3: are a couple of things I really did love about
Speaker 3: free Jack. One was a just a spectacular scene with
Speaker 3: Frankie Faison that we'll get to in a minute. But
Speaker 3: Mick Jagger also, he really rules this movie, especially when
Speaker 3: he's not talking.
Speaker 2: Like he's best when he's not talking.
Speaker 3: Yes, just reaction shots where he's wearing a spaceball's helmet
Speaker 3: or a shot that suddenly cuts to him and we
Speaker 3: get to see him in a coat with like gigantic
Speaker 3: shoulder pads and you know, ankle link dragging. It's his costume.
Speaker 3: Is Mick Jagger's costumes, Mick Jagger's reaction shots and occasionally
Speaker 3: when Mick Jagger laughs at something that this movie really
Speaker 3: kicks into high gear.
Speaker 2: He has absolutely has a great coat in this His
Speaker 2: costuming is is phenomenal. But but yeah, I guess it's
Speaker 2: one of those things you can't help. But compare Mick
Speaker 2: Jagger the actor to David Bowie the actor, And with
Speaker 2: David Bowie you were able to in I think most,
Speaker 2: if not all, of his film roles, the mystique of
Speaker 2: David Bowie the musical performer translated to the film roles
Speaker 2: that he took on and made them work marvelously. Like
Speaker 2: David Bowie was great and everything he was in I
Speaker 2: can't think of anything I've seen David Bowie in where
Speaker 2: I'm like that was disappointing. But mc jagger, the you know,
Speaker 2: the calculus didn't work there, The transit was not successful.
Speaker 3: David Bowie's visual presence in a film is the equivalent
Speaker 3: of the creaky lore theme from the soundtrack to The
Speaker 3: Lord of the Rings. You know the d like it
Speaker 3: really it conjures up the same kind of fog of
Speaker 3: the ancients.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so. We'll have more to say about Mick
Speaker 2: Jagger's performance in this film as we proceed, but we should.
Speaker 2: We should also hit on the fact that Renee Russo's
Speaker 2: in this she plays Julie Redland, the love interest in
Speaker 2: the past that is also the love interest in the future.
Speaker 2: And say what you will about this movie or Russo's
Speaker 2: I think, you know, perfectly fine but probably forgettable for performance.
Speaker 2: But she met her husband on this film. One of
Speaker 2: its mini screenwriters was Dan Gilroy, who also went on
Speaker 2: to write and direct twenty fourteen's Nightcrawler. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so say so. No matter what you think of the picture,
Speaker 2: some good stuff came out of it.
Speaker 3: Anthony Hopkins has an excellent check collecting scene in this film. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Anthony Hopkins is a fabulous actor, but this is I
Speaker 3: would say you could show this his scene in this
Speaker 3: movie as like the classroom textbook example of phoning it
Speaker 3: in if you were trying to explain that concept.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean he's not asked to do much. No,
Speaker 2: his character from the get go is dead and it
Speaker 2: is just a like brain waves and a giant jack
Speaker 2: in the sky. Yeah, but still he's Anthony Hopkins, so
Speaker 2: he classes up every scene he's in and makes you
Speaker 2: believe it on a level that just Emilio Westevez is
Speaker 2: not capable of doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a little rough. I guarantee you that when
Speaker 3: Anthony Hopkins delivered his lines in the single takes of
Speaker 3: the scenes that we saw that made it into the
Speaker 3: final version of the movie, that was the first time
Speaker 3: he had read them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would not doubt it. Now, another actor that
Speaker 2: I think everybody will will pretty much recognize now that
Speaker 2: that is in it is Jonathan Banks, who plays his
Speaker 2: character Michelette Miicolette.
Speaker 3: Michelette Michelette. He's like, he's like a creepy he's a
Speaker 3: business executive, he's a suit Yeah.
Speaker 2: So uh yeah. Banks was born in forty seven. He's
Speaker 2: had a whole career of playing heavies with eyes you
Speaker 2: can't trust. He's got these Yeah, he's got these these eyes.
Speaker 2: You just look at him and you're like that, that
Speaker 2: guy's bad back, a lion. Yeah, he's he was made
Speaker 2: to play like mercenaries and dirty cops and you know thugs.
Speaker 2: You know, that's like his whole thing.
Speaker 3: He looks like somebody whose hobby is shoplifting golf equipment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, everybody now definitely knows him as Mike, first
Speaker 2: from Breaking Bad and then from The Fabulous Equal Better
Speaker 2: Call Saul, And he's tremendous on those shows because it
Speaker 2: gives him a chance to be this cold, heavy but
Speaker 2: also play this aging, emotional human being with you know,
Speaker 2: with human connections in his life. That was not always
Speaker 2: the case with the kind of roles that Banks would
Speaker 2: have because he's he's been in so many things he
Speaker 2: often plays again like cops and heavies. He was Deputy
Speaker 2: Brent in Grimlins in eighty four. Let's see. He was
Speaker 2: in a few episodes of Tales. He was in one
Speaker 2: episode of Tales from the Crypt. He was in an
Speaker 2: episode of Highlander, the TV series. He was in Deep
Speaker 2: Space nine. He was a show regular slash lead on
Speaker 2: Wise Guy from eighty seven through ninety. He was in
Speaker 2: Murder She wrote, he was on airplane. Just so much stuff.
Speaker 2: But his first screen role is a nineteen seventy four
Speaker 2: education short from the Los Angeles Public Library titled Linda's
Speaker 2: Film on Menstruation. Oh so it's worth looking up.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's just an educational short film and it's on YouTube,
Speaker 2: and you get to see baby Jonathan Banks in there
Speaker 2: playing like this gruff guy who doesn't understand menstruation.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's like a don't do what Donnie don't does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like he's sitting on the couch and he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't understand menstruation. So that the woman in the
Speaker 2: room turns on the TV and there's an animation. There's
Speaker 2: a cartoon that explains it all.
Speaker 3: So oh I see.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he's he's ready to learn. He's not somebody who's
Speaker 3: just like just doesn't get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But his face he has that. One of the
Speaker 2: great things about Jonathan Banks. He has a great, like
Speaker 2: smoldering look like he's great at at just expressing that
Speaker 2: I don't I don't really care what's going on here
Speaker 2: with my with my you know, just my eyes and
Speaker 2: kind of like the melting features of my face. So
Speaker 2: he has that going on in that scene. You can
Speaker 2: definitely see it's it forecast everything to come in his career, Like,
Speaker 2: this is a guy that's gonna play a lot of heavies,
Speaker 2: fair enough, all right, So he's essentially your one of
Speaker 2: your sub villains here, one of your top three anyway.
Speaker 2: But then you have a whole host of additional players
Speaker 2: in this film as well.
Speaker 3: God, the cast is huge.
Speaker 2: Yeah. For instance, you have this character named Brad who
Speaker 2: shows up in the past and the future, played by
Speaker 2: David Johansson, which if you like me and you, I
Speaker 2: don't know, you grew up watching the right era of
Speaker 2: MTV or the right reruns of Saturday Night Live, then
Speaker 2: you probably will recognize him as Buster Poindexter.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I know him as New York Dolls and Scrooged.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. That was one of his big screen roles,
Speaker 2: is Scrooge. There's another great one, and that's Tales from
Speaker 2: the Dark Side, the movie in which he plays an
Speaker 2: assassin in the cat from Hell segment, which is based
Speaker 2: on a Stephen King short story.
Speaker 3: Oh Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 2: I remember the cat like goes down his throat and
Speaker 2: jumps out his stomach.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Great, yep, yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, but he's great in this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's great. He's like, what is pit boss
Speaker 2: or something? He's somebody knows in the past, and then
Speaker 2: in the future he looks him up, and of course
Speaker 2: now he's in the Hell City of two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine America. This character Brad is just a low life
Speaker 2: who instantly betrays him and gets shot.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Amanda Plumbers in this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the daughter of the late great Christopher Plumber, best
Speaker 2: known for She's probably best known for stuff like pulp
Speaker 2: fiction and The Fisher King. She often plays characters with
Speaker 2: a really fantastic, frantic energy's She's a wonderful character actor.
Speaker 2: I would say, a wonderful weird character actor. She's also
Speaker 2: in an excellent episode of the nineties Outer Limits series
Speaker 2: that I recently watched, titled A Stitch in Time, where
Speaker 2: she plays the time traveling doctor Thereesa Gibvens, who, like Go,
Speaker 2: uses her time machine to kill sexual predators in the past.
Speaker 3: Who.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she actually won an Emmy for that. She's
Speaker 2: great in it.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: In this, she plays a nun with a shotgun.
Speaker 3: That's right. I kept calling her sister Shotgun when.
Speaker 2: I think that's her name. I can't remember what else
Speaker 2: it could be. I think she's just none. Actually I
Speaker 2: think what she's credited as. Oh, let's see who else
Speaker 2: we have. Okay, we have grand l Bush places character Boone,
Speaker 2: who's sort of a corpo samurai, like right out of
Speaker 2: the Cyberpunk role playing game and video game franchise.
Speaker 3: Yes, he's like a he's like a corporate executive slash
Speaker 3: bodyguard or like mercenary type guy. Who. So he's he's
Speaker 3: in the corporate world, but he's skilled. He's got a
Speaker 3: katana and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's always carrying around this short samurai sword and
Speaker 2: has a gun. He's wearing a big suit. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: he's Yeah, like I say, right out out of Cyberpunk.
Speaker 3: So I knew this guys from die Hard, in which
Speaker 3: he's one of the the two FBI agents who come in.
Speaker 3: He's Special Agent Johnson. It's him and Robert dove Who
Speaker 3: are the two FBI guys?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah those are some some Dovey's definitely heavy.
Speaker 2: I think I probably knew Bush best from playing ball
Speaker 2: Rock and Street Fighter too. No street Fighter, it's not
Speaker 2: street Fighter too. It's just street Fighter. Yeah, the Jean
Speaker 2: Claude van Dam version of that. But yeah, he's been
Speaker 2: in a bunch of So. He was an Exorcist three,
Speaker 2: he was in License to Kill. I think I remember
Speaker 2: him from that. Basically, he did a bunch of nineties action.
Speaker 2: He was in Demolition Man. But make no mistake about
Speaker 2: Grandell Bush. He was a highly trained actor who did
Speaker 2: everything from Shakespeare and to like seventy stage musicals, like
Speaker 2: rock musicals.
Speaker 3: Oh, he was in Hair. Yeah, he was in Hair.
Speaker 2: He did a lot of TV work. He did Roots,
Speaker 2: he was in the color purple. And again, this is
Speaker 2: one of the weird things about free Jack is that
Speaker 2: it brings people together because he like so, yeah, he
Speaker 2: also met his wife, his wife of twenty six years
Speaker 2: in counting on this picture.
Speaker 3: What okay?
Speaker 2: So his wife, she was a journalist for Beet and
Speaker 2: she was on set to interview him about his role
Speaker 2: in this film, and magic happened. The magic of Freejack
Speaker 2: brought them together.
Speaker 3: Free Jack, I mean it just gets people in a
Speaker 3: place where they're ready to commit, you know.
Speaker 2: All right. Up next, this is another bit player in it.
Speaker 2: He just has one maybe two crazy.
Speaker 3: I think, just one scene, but he's great in it.
Speaker 3: This is Frankie Faison, yeah, who you might know best
Speaker 3: from playing Burrell in The Wire, but he's also Barney
Speaker 3: in the Hannibal Lecture movies. He's a great actor. He's
Speaker 3: very good at having like a kind of a calming presence,
Speaker 3: soft voice, but in this he's exactly the opposite. And
Speaker 3: this he's electric as this guy who gives in my view,
Speaker 3: an oscar worthy monologue about rat based cuisine and then
Speaker 3: a sort of Hamlet style to be or not to
Speaker 3: be soliloquy, except it's about an eagle who's trying to
Speaker 3: decide whether to commit suicide.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and his character is listed as Eagleman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's his whole eagle monologue.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, it's a yeah, this is the weirdest thing
Speaker 2: in the whole picture at this scene, Like this is
Speaker 2: Frankie's keeping it weird for us with this one. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: He's been in a ton of things over the years.
Speaker 2: He was a landlord in eighty eight Is Coming to America.
Speaker 2: But then in terms of sort of horror and sci
Speaker 2: fi stuff, he was in Chud, he was in Cat people.
Speaker 2: He was in Maximum Overdrive with Emilio.
Speaker 3: Don't we have several Maximum Overdrive people in this movie? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I guess we do. Yeah. And then for another Stephen
Speaker 2: King connection, the Langoliers. He was in that as well,
Speaker 2: that TV adaptation.
Speaker 3: Oh maybe we should talk about that on Weird House
Speaker 3: if we ever want to watch a four hour movie.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I never saw it. I just I read
Speaker 2: though it's novella. It's based on In Love the novella.
Speaker 3: But it is awful. It is, you know, made for
Speaker 3: TV Stephen King stuff, late nineties, early two thousands, whenever
Speaker 3: it was that came out. It has unbelievably bad CGI
Speaker 3: monsters in it. They just run around eating up the
Speaker 3: screen like the screen itself.
Speaker 2: They're supposed to be like the Critters, like they're basically
Speaker 2: Stephen King wrote The Critters as time munching kremlin monsters.
Speaker 3: Yeah. My memory about it is that it's about a
Speaker 3: cast of people on an airplane who all have their
Speaker 3: own demons that get explored in flashbacks. And then also
Speaker 3: there are monsters that eat time.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mainly remember the monsters that eat Time
Speaker 2: from the again from the novella. Okay, one more bit
Speaker 2: player just to mention, and that's this guy John Shay,
Speaker 2: who plays his character Morgan. I don't know much about
Speaker 2: this guy, but his IMDb headshot looks so much like
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein. I feel like he's destined for some for
Speaker 2: a biopick there. He also played Lex Luthor on Lewis
Speaker 2: and Clark, you know that venture as a Superman.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Music wise, the score didn't really do anything for me,
Speaker 2: I have to admit, but it's by Trevor Jones, who
Speaker 2: scored a lot of eighties films that I love, such
Speaker 2: as The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Time Bandits. In the nineties
Speaker 2: he did Dark City. So again, nothing in this picture
Speaker 2: really blew me away, but I think his was, particularly
Speaker 2: his work in those hints in films, was really really good.
Speaker 3: Oh I like it. I like his score on The
Speaker 3: Dark Crystal. Yeah, that's really a great score, that driving
Speaker 3: pace in the film. In fact, that that actually come
Speaker 3: down to someday I want to, I don't know, have
Speaker 3: a good argument with somebody about which of the Dark
Speaker 3: City cuts is better, because did I say Dark Crystal
Speaker 3: or Dark City earlier? For you?
Speaker 2: I think you said Dark Crystal earlier. Then you said
Speaker 2: Dark City, which got me excited because I had no
Speaker 2: idea there were different cuts.
Speaker 3: Of Dark City of Dark City, Yeah, that's what. So
Speaker 3: there's one cut that is maybe artistically superior because it
Speaker 3: cuts out some kind of bad voiceover narration at the
Speaker 3: beginning and a few other things. But the original cut
Speaker 3: has such great pacing, like it just drives and drives. H.
Speaker 3: I don't know, we'll explore it someday.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's a fun one.
Speaker 3: But one of the things that I thought was funny
Speaker 3: about the music by Trevor Jones. So when you get
Speaker 3: to the opening credits of the movie, it is just
Speaker 3: CGI shards flying around the screen like an after dark screensaver,
Speaker 3: while you've got saxophone music playing a tune that sounds
Speaker 3: a little bit like the melody of the rains of
Speaker 3: CASTI Mirror. It's like a cross between the reins of
Speaker 3: cast Mirror and then Evangelists and then Baker Street. Okay,
Speaker 3: And of course the shards become the title free Jack
Speaker 3: uh and and then we immediately cut to swirling fog
Speaker 3: and silhouettes of trucks and jeeps cutting through this dark
Speaker 3: landscape with their high beams. And then in one of
Speaker 3: the greatest transitions in the movie. So you got that,
Speaker 3: you got the the music playing and the and the
Speaker 3: dark trucks over the horizon, and then immediately estevez butt.
Speaker 3: You're just Joe Estevez's butt in like his alarm clock's
Speaker 3: going off. He's laying in bed.
Speaker 2: Whoa, it's not not.
Speaker 3: What did I say? Sorry?
Speaker 2: Different?
Speaker 3: Better? No, this is ameliaest of Az. You just like
Speaker 3: see his butt and he's wearing like green underwear and
Speaker 3: he's his alarm clock's going off, and he's like, you know,
Speaker 3: and his sheets are tossed all over the place.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And I don't know why. I didn't know at first
Speaker 3: why they made that choice to begin with his butt,
Speaker 3: but I think it's explained later on once you finally
Speaker 3: get all the premise wheeled out.
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't remember the explanation, but yeah, I'll roll
Speaker 2: with it. Like the whole opening segment of this section
Speaker 2: of this movie, I understand most of the choices they made,
Speaker 2: you know, like they want to establish who he is
Speaker 2: and what his connections are with people in the past,
Speaker 2: and we want we want to have a bone jacking
Speaker 2: scenario that is susceptible to disruption. So it but still
Speaker 2: you're watching it and you're like, I would just wish
Speaker 2: they would go ahead and bone jack this guy so
Speaker 2: we can get to the future. It seems like we
Speaker 2: spend a lot of time getting to that point.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It starts off with Renee Russo and Emilio Estevez just
Speaker 3: flirting a lot. It's it's almost overwhelmingly Sacharin. They're just
Speaker 3: like telling each other how much they love each other,
Speaker 3: and he's like, I'll win that race, honey, you just
Speaker 3: watch again. He's a race car driver and they're talking
Speaker 3: about like what will the other driver's wives be wearing?
Speaker 3: And so I think they're engaged again. Emilio Estevez playing
Speaker 3: this guy Alex for Long, that's his name, for Long.
Speaker 3: He's his Formula one racer, and and so we're watching
Speaker 3: all this sweety sweety time stuff where they're, you know,
Speaker 3: they're racing around a track in the daytime, or Emilia
Speaker 3: Westevez is he's doing like training laps or something. And
Speaker 3: then we're cutting back and forth between that and him
Speaker 3: flirting with Renee Russo, and then Mick Jagger and an
Speaker 3: army of helmeted Apocalypse goons driving their heavy machinery through
Speaker 3: the dark and Mick Jagger is using this futuristic digital
Speaker 3: map to navigate to a precise point in New York.
Speaker 3: And then we get Rene Russo and Emilia Westavez banter.
Speaker 3: She's like critiquing his driving for some reason, and he's like,
Speaker 3: you drive your typewriter, I'll drive my car. And then
Speaker 3: she says it's a computer.
Speaker 2: Uh and oh.
Speaker 3: And then very importantly because it comes up later in
Speaker 3: the movie, Emilio says he won't race unless Renee Russo
Speaker 3: nibbles his ear in public, and they they kind of
Speaker 3: him and haw about that, and then she does, and
Speaker 3: then they say how much they love each other. So
Speaker 3: all is well in the Kingdom of nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: Everybody's happy and in love and things are great.
Speaker 2: Little do they know, though, there is about to be
Speaker 2: a catastrophic car wreck. And then that's when the bone
Speaker 2: jacking will actually begin.
Speaker 3: Right, the bonejacking will begin.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: But we also we meet Brad the manager. Remember this
Speaker 3: is the guy from the New York Dolls. Brad seems
Speaker 3: to manage Emilio Estevez and some other racers, and he
Speaker 3: says things like, you do the driving, I'll do the jiving.
Speaker 3: And so he's going out schmoozing with potential sponsors. I
Speaker 3: think there's this guy who introduces himself with the name
Speaker 3: of the company. He says like Champion Spark Plugs, and
Speaker 3: then Emilio is disrespectful to him and says like, hi,
Speaker 3: mister Plugs. And so meanwhile in the dark world, Mick
Speaker 3: Jagger and his goons are like rousting a bunch of
Speaker 3: post apocalyptic future people out of their hovels and setting
Speaker 3: up a bunch of equipment to do something in this
Speaker 3: blasted few your hell zone. And then we get mixed
Speaker 3: first line, which is just okay, let's do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It sets the tone for the rest of the picture.
Speaker 2: It instantly dissolves the magic of him just looking just
Speaker 2: you know, being there, grim faced and all in the
Speaker 2: cool coat.
Speaker 3: Right. So then Emelio's racing, Alex is driving along, and
Speaker 3: Mick Jagger has a bunch of guys getting ready to
Speaker 3: do something. They're like guys wearing these reflective foil suits.
Speaker 3: And then there's a hacker guy who of course is
Speaker 3: wearing sunglasses inside while he's operating a computer. The hacker
Speaker 3: guy is named Ripper, and he's got these cool scars
Speaker 3: on his face and they're locking onto a CGI version
Speaker 3: of Alex, and then Alex's car flies off course in
Speaker 3: the past and it's about to explode in a fireball,
Speaker 3: and then zap. Just as the car explodes, Emilio is
Speaker 3: time warped into the future and he appears on an
Speaker 3: operating table. He's surrounded by the doctors in all the
Speaker 3: shiny tin foil body suits, and it seems to be
Speaker 3: it's like some kind of mobile surgical center that's inside
Speaker 3: a giant truck, which just seems like a bad idea,
Speaker 3: like would you be trying to do surgery and like
Speaker 3: a truck that's you know, like an all terrain vehicle,
Speaker 3: it's bouncing around all over the place. But anyway, well,
Speaker 3: I will.
Speaker 2: I will come to the picture's defense here and say
Speaker 2: that this would make sense in the sense you're jacking
Speaker 2: somebody's bones out of such a delicate moment in time. Okay,
Speaker 2: the timing could be a little off, And what do
Speaker 2: you do if they come through and they have like
Speaker 2: a head wound or or some sort of a laceration,
Speaker 2: like you didn't get them quite in time. You need
Speaker 2: to be able to treat them immediately. So that's my excuse.
Speaker 3: Okay, I buy it. Yeah, I mean it would be necessary,
Speaker 3: even though it's not ideal. It's just something you gotta
Speaker 3: do if you're going to be bone jacking people. It's
Speaker 3: the price of bone jacking, right. And so the doctors do.
Speaker 3: They're trying to stabilize them. They're pumping into you know,
Speaker 3: doing the CPR and stuff. They get his heart beating again,
Speaker 3: but then they realize, oh no, Emilio Estevez still has
Speaker 3: brain functions. This is bad because he's not supposed to.
Speaker 3: So they're like, grab the lobottomizer, yeah, which is a blue,
Speaker 3: glowing electric and noodle that's flopping around all over the place.
Speaker 3: And I think what it's supposed to do is go
Speaker 3: up his nose and then dig around a bit and
Speaker 3: then give him an electric shock to the brain that
Speaker 3: will make him complacent or wipe his brain or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes no sense at all because he just
Speaker 2: have something called like a mind wiper, you know, and
Speaker 2: just use that. Because once you bring in the idea
Speaker 2: of lobotomizing, it makes it seem like this brain's not
Speaker 2: going to be worth putting somebody else's mind. If you're
Speaker 2: gonna if you're gonna screw with it and lobottomize it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's confusing.
Speaker 3: Good point. But just when they're about to jab his brain,
Speaker 3: the Jagger convoy is attacked to people with guns pop
Speaker 3: up on rooftops all around. They start blowing stuff up.
Speaker 3: This knocks everybody over and Emilio gets loose, and this
Speaker 3: is apparently very bad because immediately the doctor's and the
Speaker 3: tinfoil suits start screaming, free Jack, free Jack, grab him
Speaker 3: and this leads to a big fight scene that involves
Speaker 3: the lobottomizer where Emilio has to like fight them off
Speaker 3: using the lobotomizer and he zaps them with it, and
Speaker 3: eventually he gets out of the medical truck, but like
Speaker 3: as soon as he's trying to escape, he turns back
Speaker 3: and then he locks eyes with Mick Jagger, and Mick
Speaker 3: Jagger just says, get the mate.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He tells them, yeah, stunners only don't want them damaged.
Speaker 2: And I have to say, there are two things in
Speaker 2: this movie that I think absolutely three things. Eagleman absolutely works,
Speaker 2: Mick Jagger's coat works, and then the Stunners are pretty great.
Speaker 2: So these are the rifles, these space age looking rifles
Speaker 2: that the Bonejacker Squad has that seem to shoot like
Speaker 2: electro plasma pulses and it looks really cool. Like this
Speaker 2: is definitely one of the things in the original in
Speaker 2: the trailer and in the original promotional footage that I
Speaker 2: bought into when I was younger, Like those guns look
Speaker 2: cool and that looks neat they're shooting all these like
Speaker 2: blue beams and all. Because even though this film films
Speaker 2: essentially cyberpunk, you know, or or cyberpunk made from cyberpunk
Speaker 2: derivatives or something, but one of the things you see
Speaker 2: in so many visions of the future from this period,
Speaker 2: from like the nineties, is that everybody's just shooting hard ammo.
Speaker 2: It's just a ballistic you know, worship gone wild. And
Speaker 2: at times I watch that stuff and I'm like, I
Speaker 2: just I just want to see some laser beams and
Speaker 2: some some some phasers and stuff, you know, Like that's
Speaker 2: I like sci fi guns that shoot of fancy light
Speaker 2: beams at things. And so this film at least really
Speaker 2: delivers in that category.
Speaker 3: Well, it has both because it's the Bonejackers use the
Speaker 3: light based weapons because they don't want to damage his body.
Speaker 3: They just want to immobilize him. So he can be
Speaker 3: taken to the what the psychic switchboard or whatever it's
Speaker 3: called spiritual switch spiritual switchboard, but the but the but
Speaker 3: other bad guys who just want to kill people. They
Speaker 3: use like ballistic weapons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't care about keeping the meat neat right.
Speaker 3: But so here we get a big chase scene. He's
Speaker 3: running all over the place. At one point he gets
Speaker 3: in a taxi and then gets kicked out of it,
Speaker 3: and so Alex is running all over the place, like
Speaker 3: he tries to go to Renee Russo's apartment. He's trying
Speaker 3: to find people that he used to know because he
Speaker 3: somehow doesn't realize that he's in the future. I think
Speaker 3: this is a pretty standard accidental time travel or unwitting
Speaker 3: time travel trope where the person's like they just won't
Speaker 3: accept that the year is different. So they're running around
Speaker 3: trying to find things they know where person or a
Speaker 3: thing should be there, but it's not, and it's like what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, pretty by the books. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff in this film that is just by the books, right,
Speaker 2: this sort of picture.
Speaker 3: But everywhere he goes, people are like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: he's a free jack. So everybody knows what this is.
Speaker 3: This is it must be on the news every night.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, today three free jacks were apprehended.
Speaker 2: And hell yeah, how often does this happen? It's enough
Speaker 2: that there is a slang for it. Yeah, and everybody's
Speaker 2: on the lookout for it. Like I feel like if
Speaker 2: this is on the bonejackers for just being kind of sloppy.
Speaker 3: The bonejackers are really they are screwing up a lot.
Speaker 3: It sounds like yeah, and there's this dystopian pa, you know,
Speaker 3: like the future totalitarian society has pas everywhere that just
Speaker 3: blair stuff at people. So it's going like everybody off
Speaker 3: the street, there's a free jacket large. Anyone on the
Speaker 3: street will be fired upon. And then of course we
Speaker 3: see the truest sign of dystopia, which is a giant
Speaker 3: digital billboard and says welcome to New York Thursday, November
Speaker 3: twenty third, two thousand and nine. And then Amelio looks
Speaker 3: at it and he's like what. And then there's this
Speaker 3: great moment where he pulls out his like race ticket
Speaker 3: from his I don't know, from driving earlier that day
Speaker 3: to see the date and it says nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 3: and it's like, it's as if the movie is suggesting
Speaker 3: that he was actually thinking, wait, was it two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine earlier today? Better check?
Speaker 2: Well, the movie implies, and at times expressly states that
Speaker 2: Emilio Westavez's character is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, right.
Speaker 2: I think Anthony Hopkins character refers to him as a
Speaker 2: dullard at one point. So, yes, yeah, he's uh yeah,
Speaker 2: he needs to check. He has to double check to
Speaker 2: see what year it actually was earlier today.
Speaker 3: Uh So, later we meet some corporate creeps. They're like
Speaker 3: in a giant elevator that's going up millions of floors,
Speaker 3: in a skyscraper that reaches up to the clouds. There
Speaker 3: they're in this weird skyscraper that looks like a combination
Speaker 3: of an office and a church. It's like the Cathedral
Speaker 3: of Business, you know, the Basilica of Saint Dick Fold
Speaker 3: And uh so, one of the suits is Jonathan Banks. Again,
Speaker 3: that's Mike Irman Trout from Breaking Bad, who we were
Speaker 3: talking about earlier. And here we get a bit of
Speaker 3: exposition dump. They start explaining that they're they're trying to
Speaker 3: break the bad news about the bone jack getting loose
Speaker 3: and becoming a free Jack to a guy who is
Speaker 3: wearing a Ghost of Christmas Yet to come Hood and
Speaker 3: they're like, sorry, Gramps, your bone jack got away. And
Speaker 3: then they're they're explaining, actually, we've got even worse news.
Speaker 3: The spiritual switchboard can only hold you for another thirty
Speaker 3: six hours. Shouldn't you consider an alternative body? And the
Speaker 3: guy in the Ghost of Christmas Yet to come Hood
Speaker 3: is like, I don't want an alternative body. I want
Speaker 3: this one. And then there's a reveal and it's hologram
Speaker 3: Emilio Estavez. And here I think it starts to make
Speaker 3: sense that the first thing we see in the movie
Speaker 3: is Emelio Estavez's butt, because it seems like the quality
Speaker 3: of his body in particular, I guess, including his butt
Speaker 3: compared to other future bodies and butts, seems to be
Speaker 3: relevant to the plot, Like only that butt will do
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: I wonder what if the other free Jack on hold
Speaker 2: they had Joe Estevez. Yeah, and they're they're like, come on,
Speaker 2: we got Joe as ready to go. Yeah, Emilio, it
Speaker 2: has to be Emilio. I don't want Joe, I don't
Speaker 2: want Charlie, I don't want Martin it's got to be
Speaker 2: Emilia and.
Speaker 3: There's actually another reason for that that we'll get to later.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: But then we get a scene that's a meeting between
Speaker 3: Mick Jagger again, he's playing this this mercenary named Victor
Speaker 3: Visindek with with Jonathan Banks. They like meet up to
Speaker 3: scheme together.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So two things about this scene. First of all,
Speaker 2: the office set is incredible in this This is one
Speaker 2: of several interior sets that are in this movie that
Speaker 2: are really cool. Like they just like they went crazy
Speaker 2: with art decorating it and like this one has like
Speaker 2: this crazy fractured redstone wall behind them, which is really good.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. But then the actual scene, the actual
Speaker 2: energy between Mick Jagger and Jonathan Banks, it's just weird,
Speaker 2: like and it seems like the casting is so off.
Speaker 2: So Jonathan Banks here is playing like the sleazy boss
Speaker 2: who owns Faberge eggs. Yeah, and Jagger is playing like
Speaker 2: the you know, the the badass warrior with a code,
Speaker 2: and it just feels like it should be reverse, Like
Speaker 2: Mick Jagger is the type of guy who owns Faberge eggs.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Banks is your mercenary, you know, Jonathan Banks is
Speaker 2: great in this anyway, and like Banks totally delivers. He
Speaker 2: knows what he's doing, so he's yeah, he's perfectly fine
Speaker 2: in this role. But it feels like you could just
Speaker 2: swap these two and you would have been a better place.
Speaker 3: I kind of agree with you there, Yeah, except that
Speaker 3: would have given us fewer chances to see Mick Jagger
Speaker 3: wearing the Spaceball's helmet.
Speaker 2: True, true, And I don't think it would have saved
Speaker 2: the picture in any way. But but yeah, this scene
Speaker 2: is pretty great in a dumb way. You got like
Speaker 2: basically saying like you were supposed to bone jack that guy,
Speaker 2: and it's like I tried. Now he's a free jack.
Speaker 2: You're off the case. No, I'm still going to bone
Speaker 2: jack that guy. I always bone my jack basically.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's pretty much it. He tries to fire him,
Speaker 3: and Mick Jagger's like, no, you can't fire me, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll get that meat. A funny thing, Rachel was watching
Speaker 3: parts of this with me, and she pointed out that
Speaker 3: Mick Jagger's delivery in these scenes is very late season
Speaker 3: Sir c lanister.
Speaker 2: Oh, what what do you mean?
Speaker 3: Just the kind of like vindictive cold frown and a
Speaker 3: similar to Livery and I don't know. I mean I
Speaker 3: saw it when she said it.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I could I could get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: but this is gonna be one of the ultimate like
Speaker 2: weird things about Jagger's performance is that what he gives
Speaker 2: us here in this scene is not what we get
Speaker 2: later on. Like his his performance is just all over
Speaker 2: the place, like he's a cold professional in one scene
Speaker 2: and then he'll be something completely different in another.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't wait to talk about the scene where
Speaker 3: he's like doing hacker tricks on a car on a
Speaker 3: wine delivery truck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he becomes the Riddler out of the later on.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, Alex ends up taking refuge in a church,
Speaker 3: sleeps on the floor in front of the altar, is
Speaker 3: ambushed by Amanda Plumber in the form of Sister Shotgun.
Speaker 3: She pulls a shotgun on him and they meet. They
Speaker 3: talk about things. She is shocked to learn that he's
Speaker 3: a free jack. They argue about this, like she yeah,
Speaker 3: she seems skeptical that he's a free jack, and then
Speaker 3: he explains things to her and she eventually ends up
Speaker 3: trying to help him like she's She explains the whole
Speaker 3: bone jacking premise. We also get like more exposition dump
Speaker 3: from her and he's like, what, so they were gonna
Speaker 3: do a brain transplant on me? And she goes, no,
Speaker 3: a mind transplant, So this movie is firmly dualistic.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: And then she helps him find the address of somebody
Speaker 3: who knows, so she sends she arms him with a
Speaker 3: gun and sends him off to meet somebody. But then
Speaker 3: we should cut back to the whole time. We're also
Speaker 3: cutting between Emilio Estevez and Mick Jagger, and there's like
Speaker 3: a great scene with Mick Jagger hanging out at his
Speaker 3: apartment with his buddy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, his buddy Ripper. And this is another great
Speaker 2: interior set with like really strange art on the walls
Speaker 2: and it looks lived in, like it was really well done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a red couch backlit white walls with masks
Speaker 3: all over them, like a strange rectangular clock, a mounted revolver,
Speaker 3: and cutouts from pin up magazines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's strange. I didn't know how to
Speaker 2: And I also couldn't tell if like Ripper and Jagger's
Speaker 2: character was supposed to be, like, like are they do
Speaker 2: they live together here?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Like I was expecting like some more development there and
Speaker 2: then we didn't get it. So I guess maybe they
Speaker 2: don't they just work together, but because then they just
Speaker 2: talk about the business of bone jacking.
Speaker 3: Right exactly. Ripper is played by Issi Morales Junior, who
Speaker 3: and he's the hacker who was wearing sunglasses inside earlier.
Speaker 3: Oh and we find out Mick Jagger has a lie
Speaker 3: detector computer that he tests out on Ripper. And then
Speaker 3: I don't recall this ever being used in the film again,
Speaker 3: it's being set up as if it's like Chekhov's lie
Speaker 3: detector machine. Did you did this ever come up again? No?
Speaker 2: I don't think it did. Another case of kind of
Speaker 2: wasted space.
Speaker 3: Totally pointless. Yeah. Yeah, But then the next thing is
Speaker 3: really while while Amelia Estevez is traveling to meet his
Speaker 3: old manager, Brad the New York Dolls guy, he wanders
Speaker 3: through two thousand and nine New York City and this
Speaker 3: is this is trying to give us some of the
Speaker 3: texture of the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just your basic eighties Hell City take on
Speaker 2: New York City with the sex clubs. Is a weird
Speaker 2: future car transporting chicken cages across town.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I like that, but it's also like cheesy
Speaker 3: medieval movies, like you know, Braveheart or something in that
Speaker 3: anybody who's not a CEO just has dirt smeared on
Speaker 3: their face.
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah. And then of course we get a street gang,
Speaker 2: like a Warrior's Escape from from New York s Street Gang,
Speaker 2: and it's it's super confusing too, because the gang we
Speaker 2: see like, there's this this this African American gentleman, and
Speaker 2: he has a helmet on that has both a Confederate
Speaker 2: flag and a swastika. They just like threw everything at
Speaker 2: the helmet and I have no idea what these guys are,
Speaker 2: what their deal is, except they like to shoot guns
Speaker 2: in the street.
Speaker 3: I don't think it makes any sense. It's sort of
Speaker 3: an unspoken convention of dystopian hell city sci fi that
Speaker 3: the people of the future use the political symbols of
Speaker 3: the past with no particular meaning or coherence, which, in
Speaker 3: a way to think about it, I think kind of true.
Speaker 3: Over time, people just use symbols of the past with
Speaker 3: clearly without understanding what they mean at all.
Speaker 2: But ultimately this is just action. He's moving through anyway
Speaker 2: to get from point A to point B.
Speaker 3: Right, So Alex meets up with Brad and Brad's like, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: you're a bone jack or I mean, you're a free jacket.
Speaker 3: So they're hanging out, and I love how they're in
Speaker 3: Brad's apartment and people. You just hear people constantly getting
Speaker 3: shot and screaming outside the window. It sounds like the future.
Speaker 3: The wars out in the streets never stop. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: Emilio Estevez is like, well, why me, Why why do
Speaker 3: they need my bones? Why am I the bone jack?
Speaker 3: Why can't they just take somebody else's body?
Speaker 2: And oh yeah, because that's a great point that you
Speaker 2: don't think about until this point exactly.
Speaker 3: And Brad's like, well, the answer is obvious. You're clean.
Speaker 3: You're from the past, so you haven't been exposed to
Speaker 3: all of the pollution and drugs that have ruined everybody
Speaker 3: else's body in the future. Plus everybody who alive today
Speaker 3: has been living for years without an ozone.
Speaker 2: Layer, So yeah, the ozone layer is gone. So this
Speaker 2: makes me wonder is this part of the pre Highlander
Speaker 2: two chronology? Oh yeah, because it's set in what twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, So I think you could line up.
Speaker 3: This movie has a lot in common with Highlander two.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, not as good, not as good as that is.
Speaker 3: Good. Well, I would say, actually it's better than Highlander two,
Speaker 3: but Highlander two is better to watch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I don't know. I think I would say
Speaker 2: it's better than Highlander.
Speaker 3: Two, but I mean you'll say Highlander two is better.
Speaker 2: Highlander two is a better film, okay, and also a
Speaker 2: better viewing experience. But then anyway, it's still fun. It's so. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we continue moving through the city here, even more dystopia
Speaker 2: cyberpunk tropes are rolled out. You know, big business controls everything.
Speaker 2: Japanese businesses have this superiority, environmental disaster, future drugs, bodies
Speaker 2: for sale, immortality for the rich. It's just checking off
Speaker 2: all the boxes.
Speaker 3: It's all there. Yeah, And like every other sci fi
Speaker 3: movie from the late eighties and early nineties, it assumes
Speaker 3: that Japanese corporations are soon to take over the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so the Japanese business panic is which actually
Speaker 3: was in Diehard.
Speaker 2: Too, I seen, oh yeah, was it? Okay.
Speaker 3: It's a pervasive assumption of the movies of the time.
Speaker 2: You know, speaking of cyberpunk, I've been playing the Cyberpunk
Speaker 2: twenty seventy seven game. Oh really, yeah, And that's one
Speaker 2: of the interesting things to engage in with it is
Speaker 2: to think about, like, this is a very it's a
Speaker 2: very nineteen eighties vision of the future that really doesn't
Speaker 2: match up in many ways with sort of modern sensibilities
Speaker 2: and all. And yeah, you have all that stuff like
Speaker 2: the like Japanese business panic that are a part of it,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's it's it's weird to think about.
Speaker 3: Well, that panic plays into the first scene where we
Speaker 3: meet Renee Russo of two thousand and nine, who I
Speaker 3: will say looks exactly the same as she did in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one. She literally does not look like she
Speaker 3: has aged a day, So I guess maybe she has
Speaker 3: not been exposed to the sky without ozone or or
Speaker 3: something that's ruined everybody else's his body in the future.
Speaker 3: But she is now a high powered executive at this
Speaker 3: corporation called McCandless, which is the biggest, most powerful corporation
Speaker 3: in the world, and she is colleagues with Jonathan Banks,
Speaker 3: with this guy Michellet, and Renee Russo is doing some
Speaker 3: top level negotiation in Japanese with these representatives from a
Speaker 3: Japanese corporation and the executives across the table eventually after
Speaker 3: they negotiate their like the mineral rights are yours? And
Speaker 3: the CEO of the McCandless Corporation is Ian McCandless played
Speaker 3: by Anthony Hopkins, and he video calls Renee russo he's like,
Speaker 3: congratulations on business. Now do more business now.
Speaker 2: I don't recall, do we know McCandless is actually dead
Speaker 2: and that he's the patron looking to get inside this
Speaker 2: bone Jack body.
Speaker 3: So technically no, that is a real spoiler that is
Speaker 3: revealed at the end of the movie that the person
Speaker 3: looking for Emilistevez's bone Jack body is actually Anthony Hopkins.
Speaker 3: But you are not supposed to know it at this point.
Speaker 3: You're supposed to think he's still alive and just communicating
Speaker 3: with her through video phone calls. But no, it's absolutely obvious.
Speaker 3: I had never seen the movie before, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: Anthony Hopkins is the person who needs the Stavez body.
Speaker 2: Okay. See, I couldn't remember if like the trailer spoiled
Speaker 2: it for me or marketing material back in the early nineties,
Speaker 2: but I feel like I always knew, like there was
Speaker 2: never a twist here for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's a thousand percent obvious. So then
Speaker 3: you're back to Brad and Alex walking around. They're trying
Speaker 3: to find Renee Russo. Brad's trying to help him find
Speaker 3: her because it's like, oh, once you know she sees you,
Speaker 3: she'll she'll help you. And so Brad takes Alex to
Speaker 3: a diner where for some reason, people start pointing guns
Speaker 3: at each other. And then you find I know it's
Speaker 3: a double cross because Brad told told Alex that he
Speaker 3: was going to help him fire the Renee Russo, but
Speaker 3: instead he just calls up the police to collect the
Speaker 3: bounty on his old friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again, this is a whole section of the
Speaker 2: movie that takes way longer than it needs to.
Speaker 3: Yes, and this turns into a car chase. Amelio Estevez
Speaker 3: driving a police motorcycle around, driving through restaurant kitchens. I
Speaker 3: see some familiar Atlanta streets in the scene, and eventually
Speaker 3: Alex like crashes through a checkpoint and we get to
Speaker 3: see some of the roads and stuff. But he's going
Speaker 3: to Renee Russo's apartment.
Speaker 2: I have to say, I like they have a mix,
Speaker 2: an appropriate mix of some old looking conventional cars, but
Speaker 2: then also some snazzy future cars. Not flying cars, road
Speaker 2: based cars, but futuristic in appearance.
Speaker 3: Most of the cars, or at least the nice looking
Speaker 3: cars in the future, are covered by some kind of
Speaker 3: single piece fiberglass carapace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which seems like a good solution. You know, you
Speaker 2: don't have to completely redesign your space cars from the
Speaker 2: ground up. Just get some sort of sleep body to
Speaker 2: put on top of it, and you know, it ends
Speaker 2: up looking pretty good.
Speaker 3: It's just a Honda Civic with a big one piece
Speaker 3: top on it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're essentially parade floats, right.
Speaker 3: Also, the horses and carriages in the future, there's lots
Speaker 3: of horses and carriages all over the place.
Speaker 2: Huh okay, yeah, I forgot about that.
Speaker 3: But Alex goes to Julie's apartment, Julia's renee russo he
Speaker 3: breaks in. He's like, hey, I'm here. I got bone jacked,
Speaker 3: you know, but now I'm a free jack. And they argue, let's.
Speaker 2: Pick up exactly where we left.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know, seventeen years or something
Speaker 3: have passed for her. It's been I haven't done the math,
Speaker 3: right whatever. Some number of years have passed and he's
Speaker 3: just like, hey, you know, how are things? And she
Speaker 3: freaks out. She doesn't think it's really him. She thinks
Speaker 3: that somebody else has bonejacked his body and is now
Speaker 3: trying to trick her.
Speaker 2: I want to see a remake where the Renee Russo
Speaker 2: character is totally not into this. And she's like talking
Speaker 2: to her husband or partner and she's like, yeah, God,
Speaker 2: my ex boyfriend from seventeen years ago turns out he's
Speaker 2: a free jack. Won't lead me alone. I've told him
Speaker 2: like that was seventeen years ago. Like, life moves on.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry you went through this, but I cannot help you. Right,
Speaker 2: I've got the end of it. I'm an executive at McCandleis.
Speaker 3: I don't have time for this.
Speaker 2: Yeah like you, yeah, you were a mistake seventeen years ago,
Speaker 2: and I really I'm not about to pick that same
Speaker 2: mistake up and run through the streets with it.
Speaker 3: That would have been an amazing direction.
Speaker 1: But no.
Speaker 3: Instead, she's just like single and at first she's skeptical,
Speaker 3: but you know what's going to happen?
Speaker 4: Come on?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then this turns into a car chase. Mick
Speaker 3: Jagger like finds Emilia Estevez at her apartment and then
Speaker 3: he starts chasing him down in this red land boat
Speaker 3: that is just hilarious. But Alex hijacks a truck full
Speaker 3: I think it's like a wine bottle delivery truck. It's
Speaker 3: full of these neon green bottles of wine. So they
Speaker 3: do a car chase around, we see a Marta station
Speaker 3: and then there's one of my favorite parts of the
Speaker 3: movie that was really funny was when.
Speaker 2: I have to say, real quick though, I have to
Speaker 2: say about that wine vehicle. Yeah, watching it this time,
Speaker 2: I instantly thought of Amy Sedaris's regional wine lady Ronnie
Speaker 2: Vino from her television series At Home with Amy Siderius.
Speaker 2: And I don't know what she drives. Oh yeah, she's
Speaker 2: this hilarious character that goes door to door selling lines.
Speaker 2: But like, this has to be Ronnie Vino's vehicle that
Speaker 2: is stolen here.
Speaker 3: Well, I have to check that out. But anyway, I
Speaker 3: thought the scene was funny for multiple reasons. Number one
Speaker 3: is that, yeah, I understand Alex forlong. Our protagonist is
Speaker 3: supposed to be a race car driver, so it makes
Speaker 3: sense that he would have some skills at evading these mercenaries.
Speaker 3: No matter what he was driving, but still it seems implausible.
Speaker 3: He's just fully outmaneuvering a fleet of police interceptor vehicles
Speaker 3: and these like mercenary motorcycles and stuff in a delivery
Speaker 3: truck for like full of you know, Neon Green Pole
Speaker 3: mass On.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And oh and it's got a laptop inside the cab
Speaker 3: where he's driving that Mick Jagger keeps coming on like
Speaker 3: pop up on the screen on the laptop and harassing
Speaker 3: him while he's driving and saying like, you can't get
Speaker 3: rid of me that easily, And he'll try to close
Speaker 3: the laptop and then it'll just open up automatically and
Speaker 3: Mick Jagger and jaggers and laughing at him.
Speaker 2: Yeah again he suddenly his character is suddenly the Riddler
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like a complete shift from what it was earlier.
Speaker 3: And the mercenaries who worked for Mick Jagger, they're all
Speaker 3: dressed like spaceballs once again. Eventually, Furlong escapes this scene
Speaker 3: by jumping off of a bridge into water from a
Speaker 3: height that would absolutely have killed him. He drifts down
Speaker 3: the river, I guess, and he ends up he ends
Speaker 3: up washing up on a dock somewhere and he meets
Speaker 3: Frankie Faison, who we mentioned earlier, who's just hanging out
Speaker 3: at a dock next to all this toxic water and
Speaker 3: he's eating something. He tries to share his food, I think,
Speaker 3: but he's like, yeah, this is a sauteed river rat.
Speaker 3: And then they have a fantastic conversation about the best
Speaker 3: way to cook river rats. And then this goes into
Speaker 3: this monologue about an eagle that really doesn't make any sense,
Speaker 3: but I would say acting prize for the movie. He
Speaker 3: goes to Frankie Faison.
Speaker 2: Well, and it works too because the kind of monologue
Speaker 2: you'd expect to get from like a crazy person, you know,
Speaker 2: that lives under a bridge in the in a dystopian future,
Speaker 2: Like it shouldn't make sense. It should it should have
Speaker 2: this sort of raw energy to it that's kind of
Speaker 2: muddled by strange thinking, and it totally shines through. It's
Speaker 2: it is the best scene in the whole picture.
Speaker 3: It's like simultaneously incoherent and wise.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, and in that very sagely you're like, I
Speaker 2: don't know what he just said, but I think it
Speaker 2: was really important, and I will I will buy him.
Speaker 2: It's the same trick that shaman throughout history have used
Speaker 2: and Eagle Guy has no exception.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but anyway, so we come back to Renee Russo
Speaker 3: and her colleague Boone, who again this is Grandel Bush.
Speaker 3: They go looking for Alex and the slums and they
Speaker 3: sort of make up, right, Renee Russo is like, if
Speaker 3: I'd known it was really you, and so they're they're
Speaker 3: happy now again together. She believes it's really him and
Speaker 3: she's going to help him free Jack. She's going to
Speaker 3: help him escape somehow, and her plan is, oh, and
Speaker 3: they see a digital billboard that's like, oh, the bounty
Speaker 3: on him is now ten million dollars. But the plan
Speaker 3: is that she's going to meet up with a fancy
Speaker 3: friend of hers named Morgan at the most Icely canteena
Speaker 3: of two thousand and nine New York. It's like, you
Speaker 3: know very much. New York's hottest club is free Jack.
Speaker 3: And so they go there and she's going to go
Speaker 3: meet her friend who apparently helps people escape. I don't
Speaker 3: know why she knows a guy who just helps Free
Speaker 3: Jack's escape, but she does. And meanwhile, Emilio Estevez is
Speaker 3: just sitting by himself at the bar. He drinks something
Speaker 3: that the bartender gives him and this like messes up
Speaker 3: his brain. And then Mick Jagger's real life wife at
Speaker 3: the time of this film, or at least his partner,
Speaker 3: I think their marriage was later annulled. Her name's Jerry Hall.
Speaker 3: She is also in the movie, and she shows up
Speaker 3: as a TV interviewer who like walks up to a
Speaker 3: Emelio Estevez and is like, Hey, what's going on? And
Speaker 3: then they realize like, oh, this is that free jack
Speaker 3: everybody's looking for, and they put him on live TV
Speaker 3: and he starts quoting Arnold Schwarzenegger from The Terminator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually pretty great, you know, because they just
Speaker 2: went ahead and had the Furlong character just get totally wasted,
Speaker 2: like he's a kind of a dumb dumb and this
Speaker 2: this expresses it. You know. He just he drinks too
Speaker 2: much of this bar. He's out of it, and he's
Speaker 2: just starts gabbing to the to the journalists here, and
Speaker 2: she's like, roll it, We're gonna get the ratings tonight.
Speaker 2: So I actually kind of like this scene.
Speaker 3: A weird connection is that. So she was I think
Speaker 3: married to Mick Jagger at the time, but Jerry Hall
Speaker 3: is now married to Rupert Murdoch, Yes, that Murdock.
Speaker 2: Wasn't she also in Batman? Wasn't she the model character
Speaker 2: that Jack Nicholson's Joker scars with Acid?
Speaker 3: And I think she was, Oh I don't remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think she popped up in a number of
Speaker 2: films during that period. All Right, So from here we
Speaker 2: go to to Morgan's apartment, which and once again once
Speaker 2: again some great interior decorating.
Speaker 3: Yes, giant foot art. He just has these like twenty
Speaker 3: foot tall feet sculptures in his house. Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I really think we should credit where credits due.
Speaker 2: First of all for mc jagger's coat. Lisa Jensen was
Speaker 2: costume designer on this film, and then art direction for
Speaker 2: the film was James A. Taylor, Set direction by Bruce A. Gibson.
Speaker 2: So really, without this bunch, I'm not sure what we
Speaker 2: would be looking at in these scenes.
Speaker 3: I agree. So I think they're just negotiating like that
Speaker 3: they're gonna get him out of there, like Morgan's gonna
Speaker 3: arrange for him to escape somewhere. And then and then
Speaker 3: there's a love scene. Of course, Emilio Estevez and Renee
Speaker 3: Russo they they're you know, they slip into something more
Speaker 3: comfortable and there's some saxophone playing in the background and
Speaker 3: you get all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but again more just wasted space in this film,
Speaker 2: Like this is again previous scene wasted space. Then there's
Speaker 2: this and yeah, I could.
Speaker 3: Really trim this down. Yeah, there is some that's utterly
Speaker 3: inconsequential to the rest of the film. But a good
Speaker 3: B plot scene where Amanda Plumber just kicks Jonathan Banks
Speaker 3: in the testes. Yeah, and they really milk it, like
Speaker 3: he does the classic sinking to the floor moaning with
Speaker 3: his eyes rolling back kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It accomplishes nothing though for the plot or for
Speaker 2: these characters, Like, I don't really know why we bothered
Speaker 2: with this.
Speaker 3: So Emilio Estevez is getting ready to escape. He's going
Speaker 3: to a boat and he's going with Boone I remember
Speaker 3: Grandel Marsha And they're walking together and Boone is explaining
Speaker 3: that he has become a people to the city, like
Speaker 3: he inspires everyone because he has a free jack and
Speaker 3: the people are like, wow, I guess if he could
Speaker 3: be free, I could be free too or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little flimsy. Clearly, they had to establish
Speaker 2: why Boone would help him, Yeah, if there's ten million,
Speaker 2: and I think it's supposedly more. At this point, it
Speaker 2: keeps going up, like there's a tremendous amount of money
Speaker 2: on the table for this guy. Why are you helping him?
Speaker 2: And he says, well, you inspire my grandma.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm like, okay, I'll buy I'm not happy if.
Speaker 3: My grandma loves you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they're supposed to go get on a boat, but
Speaker 3: then bam boat explodes. It's a Jagger ambush, and then
Speaker 3: it's a double double cross because Jagger is trying to
Speaker 3: capture Furlong alive. But then these other dudes show up
Speaker 3: and start shooting at Mick Jagger and shooting at Emilio Estevez,
Speaker 3: and I think Boone is like, those aren't bone jackers.
Speaker 3: There's someone else in the area, and so they're all
Speaker 3: they're all running around. You find out Boone has a
Speaker 3: katana and he's like a total badass and he fights people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, basically, you have Jagger's bunch wants to
Speaker 2: finish the bone jacking contract, and then Jonathan Banks's bunch
Speaker 2: they don't want the bone jacking to take place because
Speaker 2: they don't want Anthony Hopkins to get his new body
Speaker 2: because then he's still in charge of the company if
Speaker 2: that happens. Yeah, we don't really learn that till later.
Speaker 2: But that's why we're building up too, That's right.
Speaker 3: We find that out from Jonathan Banks and a big
Speaker 3: another exposition dumb scene. But everybody's running around, chasing, shooting
Speaker 3: at each other. There's a big fight scene between Emilio
Speaker 3: Estevez and a large, strong bone jacker who gets electrocuted.
Speaker 3: During this whole sequence, Mick Jagger is creeping around in
Speaker 3: a hilarious helmet. But then there's a scene where Furlong
Speaker 3: has a chance to kill Mick Jagger, but he doesn't.
Speaker 3: He lets him live. He spares his life, and for
Speaker 3: this Mick Jagger, Mick Jagger gives him a head start.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'll let you escape because I'm a man
Speaker 3: of honor. You're a man of honor. And he starts counting,
Speaker 3: and Mick Jagger says, one Mississippi, two Mississippi.
Speaker 2: I mean this ridiculous. Yeah, that's just ridiculous. It's way
Speaker 2: too much of a lead too, Like why you just
Speaker 2: spend like they established, it's gonna take costs, like millions
Speaker 2: and millions of dollars to catch this guy again. You've
Speaker 2: got him, but you're like, no, I'm a man of
Speaker 2: my honor. I'm gonna let you get away again.
Speaker 3: Right, So they eventually they go back to McCandless headquarters.
Speaker 3: He meets back up with Renee Russo. They go to
Speaker 3: McCandless headquarters to meet with Jonathan Banks and have Jonathan
Speaker 3: Banks explain the whole lot yep, and Renee Russo and
Speaker 3: Emilio Estevez end up end up going up to the
Speaker 3: Spiritual Switchboard to find you know, there's a number of
Speaker 3: double crosses yet again, and people trying to kill each other.
Speaker 3: So they end up a the Spiritual Switchboard, which looks
Speaker 3: like a smoother version of the Satan powered hyperdrive in
Speaker 3: Event Horizon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's you know, clearly, whatever is happening here, it
Speaker 2: can only take place at the top of a high
Speaker 2: rise in Manhattan aka Atlanta. And yeah, it raises a
Speaker 2: lot of questions, like, I guess the big one is
Speaker 2: what if we are actually dealing with spirit Like what
Speaker 2: if this film is presenting a future in which which
Speaker 2: there is a spiritual reality to the individual and that's
Speaker 2: why you have some sort of crazy contraption because there's
Speaker 2: like an actual ghost soul, you know, like there's an
Speaker 2: Anthony Hopkins poltergeist trapped in this thing and they have
Speaker 2: to eventually try and slam it into some new meat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really does explore some cartesian territory. I think
Speaker 3: you can give it it's philosophical credit, especially because so
Speaker 3: they go up to the Spiritual Switchboard and they meet
Speaker 3: McCandleis that's Anthony Hopkins, and he's full on lawnmower Man
Speaker 3: beyond cyberspace. He's just hanging out in digital worlds with
Speaker 3: digital diamonds. Our heroes are transported to a giant VR
Speaker 3: castle inside what looks like a Utah desert, and Anthony
Speaker 3: Hopkins says, welcome to my mind. And Anthony Hopkins has
Speaker 3: been faking being alive through video simulation the whole time.
Speaker 3: We find out that he's in love with Renee Russo
Speaker 3: and he wants Amelio Estevez's body so that she would
Speaker 3: love him in return. And so they're trying to do
Speaker 3: the mind transfer on this big thing that looks exactly
Speaker 3: like a jack, like it's a spike with these balls
Speaker 3: coming out of the middle of it, and the Jack
Speaker 3: opens up and there's a big crystal inside it, so
Speaker 3: it's literally crystal energy.
Speaker 2: Now the film does get very briefly and just into
Speaker 2: this the philosophy or another philosophy really, I guess you
Speaker 2: would say the ethics of bone jacking, which is kind
Speaker 2: of interesting because you know, he's like they bring up
Speaker 2: the point which I mostly agree with here, like he
Speaker 2: was gonna in Ilio west Vesz's character was going to die.
Speaker 2: That was going to happen, and they can't really interfere
Speaker 2: with that, like that would be that would really mess up,
Speaker 2: you know, the entire time stream. All they can do
Speaker 2: is steal his body and then do something with it,
Speaker 2: and it's just an accident that he got free and
Speaker 2: that he's escaped. So to a certain extent, bone jacking
Speaker 2: is a is a victimist crime.
Speaker 3: Oh you think so, huh, you're a pro bone jacking,
Speaker 3: are you?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm I'm not in I guess I'm not entirely
Speaker 2: pro bone jacking. I mean it does symbolize, you know,
Speaker 2: the a great deal of unbalanced privilege in the future
Speaker 2: for the few individuals who can afford immortality, which you know,
Speaker 2: we still see plenty of science fiction that deals with that,
Speaker 2: because that's ultimately a that's a reality we're potential facing.
Speaker 2: You know, these longevity science improves, you know, who's going
Speaker 2: to be able to afford it? Who gets to have
Speaker 2: their life span extended? Who gets to live forever?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: Sure, So it gets into some of that territory and
Speaker 2: that is that is some rich sci fi territory to explore,
Speaker 2: and they briefly do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as sort of they kind of half address it.
Speaker 3: There is a line where Amelia Estevez says to Anthony Hopkins,
Speaker 3: you don't need a new body, you need a new soul.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's like, yeah, whatever, meat, prepare.
Speaker 3: To have me in your meat. And then there's a
Speaker 3: psychedelic mind transfer scene, but it doesn't complete because Jonathan
Speaker 3: Banks shows up to kill everybody. I guess because oh,
Speaker 3: because he just wants Anthony Hopkins to die so that
Speaker 3: he can take over the business.
Speaker 2: Right. He needs this to fail, and he's been trying
Speaker 2: to make it fail the whole time. And then the
Speaker 2: last thing he's going to try is just shooting the crystal,
Speaker 2: which he does, but then he shot himself.
Speaker 3: No, I think Renee Russo shoots yeah, Chris, she shoots.
Speaker 2: Why does she have a gun?
Speaker 3: She gets a gun something, she shoots the crystal stops
Speaker 3: the transfer, and then there's a question. So Emilio Estevez
Speaker 3: is there and it's like, uh, is Anthony Hopkins mind
Speaker 3: in him or is it still his mind? And there's
Speaker 3: a standoff with Mick Jagger and Jonathan Banks with their
Speaker 3: all point and guns at each other, and they're all
Speaker 3: trying to figure out is that really Anthony Hopkins or not?
Speaker 3: And they're gonna kill him if it's if it's still
Speaker 3: Amelio Estevez, but Jagger's gonna let him live if it's
Speaker 3: Anthony Hopkins. And uh so they do a trick. They're like,
Speaker 3: what's your personal identification number? And Emilio Estevez starts saying
Speaker 3: numbers and Mick Jagger's like that's right, and so they
Speaker 3: they shoot Jonathan Banks. But then you find out there's
Speaker 3: a very sweet ending where for a moment you are
Speaker 3: supposed to think, oh, maybe it did complete and the
Speaker 3: bad guy won. Anthony Hopkins is now in the meat.
Speaker 3: But there is a sweet ending where Renee Russo and
Speaker 3: Emilio Estevez are driving off and Mick Jagger comes up
Speaker 3: to them and like leans into the car window and
Speaker 3: is like, hey, you know, I know that number you
Speaker 3: gave was wrong, but I decided to let you live
Speaker 3: because you're a stand up guy or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I mean, it's not a bad ending. I
Speaker 2: like the whole mystery of it, like did it work?
Speaker 2: Did it not work? And it's like a kind of
Speaker 2: a fun double cross ultimately a face turn for Mick
Speaker 2: Jagger's character. But it does take a long time to
Speaker 2: get to this point in the picture.
Speaker 3: It does, and it strikes me as like that would
Speaker 3: be a cool thing in the future, if there's some
Speaker 3: kind of like a prestige attached to the idea of
Speaker 3: being original meat. You say like, no, no, no, my
Speaker 3: mind is still in the meat that it was originally
Speaker 3: and this is not new meat.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I mentioned the nineties Outer Limits series earlier.
Speaker 2: This whole film would have made a really solid forty
Speaker 2: five minute nineties Outer Limit episode. Yes, Instead, it's like
Speaker 2: twice that length, and I think that's the one of
Speaker 2: the problems here.
Speaker 3: There is a really funny rock song that plays over
Speaker 3: the end credits. I had to look this up. It's
Speaker 3: by The Scorpions and it's called Solid. It's called hit
Speaker 3: between the eyes, and the lyrics include lines like late
Speaker 3: at night, when you're all alone, take a ride to
Speaker 3: the danger zone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's it.
Speaker 3: As we've been saying, I think this movie's pretty awful.
Speaker 3: It has some real pleasures in terms of ridiculous dialog
Speaker 3: and shots of Mick Jagger looking really funny in certain costumes.
Speaker 3: I think it would be better if it was like
Speaker 3: thirty to forty minutes Shorter leaned harder into the absurdity.
Speaker 3: It could sort of veer into camp classic if it
Speaker 3: were like that. As it is, it's kind of an
Speaker 3: uncut gem.
Speaker 2: It would have been nate if the first time Emilio's
Speaker 2: character jumps off the bridge and you say, oh, that
Speaker 2: would have killed the normal person. What if he does
Speaker 2: die and he's immediately bonejacked again.
Speaker 3: Bone jack to a second future. This time it's twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Things are even worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree with all your points there. Oh,
Speaker 2: here's my casting workaround. Okay, that could have improved things. Okay.
Speaker 2: Grand Al Bush plays our hero Alex Furlong.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: Amanda Plumber plays Julie Redland, the love interests.
Speaker 3: Okay, nice, Yeah, she's exec at McCandless. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jonathan Banks and Mick Jagger switch role, so Banks
Speaker 2: as the Sindeck and Jagger as Michellette.
Speaker 3: The corporate guy with Faberge eggs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Frankie still plays the Eagle guy, but in a
Speaker 2: far expanded role. I don't know how they just get
Speaker 2: more screen time for that character.
Speaker 3: He should be come like the full on obi wan
Speaker 3: kenobi of the movie. He's just like throughout the whole
Speaker 3: thing is like this sort of the guy character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Anthony Hopkins remains mccandle's because he's fine in that,
Speaker 2: and then the rest just fill in is needed. I
Speaker 2: don't know. Emilio can play somebody, yeah, Buster Poindexer can
Speaker 2: do whatever. But I feel like, get the weirder actors,
Speaker 2: the more interesting actors up towards the top. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what I want, and Cass McJagger more appropriately.
Speaker 3: Get the mate.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, if you want to get the meat.
Speaker 2: Lucky for you. Again, this was a thirty million dollar picture,
Speaker 2: so you can rent it or buy it everywhere. It's
Speaker 2: it's not as like streamable as part of a service
Speaker 2: as you might expect, you know, in terms of like
Speaker 2: Netflix and Amazon Prime and all but you can absolutely
Speaker 2: buy it or rent it anywhere. It's even available on
Speaker 2: Blu Ray for crying out loud.
Speaker 3: I wonder if the Blu Ray has the same menus.
Speaker 3: My god, Blu Ray made in like twenty fourteen or
Speaker 3: something still has the page just for the url of
Speaker 3: Morgan Creek.
Speaker 2: I bet it has like just a loveless, like film
Speaker 2: studio template, Like whatever everything else had that came out
Speaker 2: that wasn't didn't have like a cult following or you know,
Speaker 2: wasn't a huge hit. It just gets the same treatment
Speaker 2: as everything else.
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody right in about your favorite DVD menus. What's
Speaker 3: the worst DVD menu you've ever found. What's the most
Speaker 3: absurd dedication of an entire menu option you've ever found?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the most over ambitious animation from switching from one
Speaker 2: page to the next. Yeah, I'd love to hear about it.
Speaker 2: Or oh god, some of these, especially some of the
Speaker 2: kids DVDs from back in the day, they would have
Speaker 2: games like really oh god, like really rough attempts to
Speaker 2: have some sort of a click based game on the DVD.
Speaker 2: It was rough.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they got Easter eggs, you remember those, where like
Speaker 3: you'd move the cursor around to a thing that you
Speaker 3: didn't realize you could move it to and then it
Speaker 3: would play a hidden scene or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I hope there's still I do love hidden
Speaker 2: tracks and Easter eggs and stuff, and I hope some
Speaker 2: of that's still going on. All right, Well, we're gonna
Speaker 2: go ahead and close it out here. But yeah, this
Speaker 2: was free Jack. We hope you enjoyed it. Again. There
Speaker 2: was a little bit of weirdness in this one, maybe
Speaker 2: not as weird as some of the other pictures, but
Speaker 2: still was a lot of fun to talk about, and
Speaker 2: I think it is important to to talk about sometimes
Speaker 2: these big budget films which can sometimes turn out pretty
Speaker 2: weird but also can just really fail to set the
Speaker 2: world on fire. All right, Well, if you want to
Speaker 2: watch more episodes of Weird House Cinema, you can catch
Speaker 2: it every Friday in the Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: podcast feed, and you can find that podcast feed wherever
Speaker 2: you get your podcasts, wherever that happens to be. Just rate, review,
Speaker 2: and subscribe if you have the ability to do so.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello.
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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