Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Freebie and the Bean Blu-ray Movie Review

Bay Area Mayhem

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 8, 2017

Pick your favorite pair of buddy cops: Riggs and Murtagh? Carter and Lee? Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett? Starsky and Hutch? Cagney and Lacey? All of them owe something to the 1974 surprise hit Freebie and the Bean, starring James Caan and Alan Arkin as a pair of feuding San Francisco detectives for whom the art of investigation resembles a demolition derby followed by a barroom brawl. Produced and directed by Richard Rush (The Stunt Man) from a story by Floyd Mutrux (Mulholland Falls) and a script by Robert Kaufman (Love at First Bite), Freebie is a do-it-yourself-guide for bad police work. It exists in an alternative universe where "serve and protect" has become "search and destroy".

Like many Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive Collection, Freebie is a cult classic, retaining a devoted following in the three-plus decades since the film first played in theaters. WAC has rewarded fans' devotion with a new 1080p presentation that offers Rush's elaborately choreographed chaos—shot on location on the streets of San Francisco—in all its anarchic (and politically incorrect) insanity.

One of the subtler jokes in Freebie is that nobody ever uses the real names of the two titular cops. They're known only by their nicknames. Caan plays "Freebie", so called because he's always cadging handouts from citizens he's supposed to protect. By the standards of Frank Serpico, he would be cashiered (not to mention prosecuted) for soliciting bribes. The only time Freebie displays a speck of decency is with his sweetly dutiful girlfriend (Linda Marsh). Arkin plays "Bean", a Mexican-American whose nickname is a racial slur, one of many lobbed at him by Freebie in the course of an average day. Bean's wife, whom he suspects of having an affair, is played by Valerie Harper, TV's Rhoda on Mary Tyler Moore (and later her own spinoff), thereby providing a rare instance of casting consistency, with both halves of this Hispanic-American couple portrayed by Jewish actors. (Note, however, that only Harper speaks with an overripe accent suitable for a comedy sketch, whereas Bean sounds like the boy from Brooklyn that Arkin really is.)

The investigation that provides the film's excuse for a plot isn't a model of clarity, but it involves a crime kingpin named Red Meyers (Jack Kruschen), against whom Freebie and Bean have been trying to build a case for months, mostly by sorting through his garbage for evidence. Just when they think they've assembled the goods for an indictment, including a mysterious witness they've blackmailed into testifying, they receive word that rival mobsters from Detroit have put out a hit on Meyers. A frustrated D.A. (Alex Rocco) orders the pair to keep Meyers alive until he can be indicted, thereby placing the detectives in the awkward position of providing an unofficial protection detail for the crook they've spent over a year trying to nail.

None of this makes a lot of sense, and even Rush doesn't take it seriously, burying much of the exposition in a sound mix of muffled and overlapping dialogue. The director's real interest is in the chaos that erupts wherever the two detectives go, whether it's a public restroom shootout, a chase that leaves wrecked property and injured citizenry in its wake, or a suspect wrongly identified and randomly beaten to a pulp. Freebie and Bean aren't so much cops as hoodlums with badges, and you'd be safer getting your law enforcement services from Pulp Fiction's Vincent and Jules. The film survives on the oddball chemistry between Arkin and Caan, who improvised much of their rapid-fire dialogue, and on the stunt team's impressive coordination of vehicles colliding, crashing and overturning, all of it staged practically, long before the days of CGI. Even if you're alienated by Freebie's macho posturing or Bean's whiny negativity, you can't help but laugh at their antics. When their squad car plunges off a highway overpass into an unfortunate couple's apartment, prompting Freebie to request that a tow truck be dispatched to "the third floor, apartment 304", you know you've left the real world far behind. Warner Brothers should have opened Freebie with titles from Looney Tunes; it's an R-rated, feature-length cartoon.

Freebie and the Bean Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Freebie and the Bean was shot by the great László Kovács, whose achievements in cinematography range from the documentary realism of Easy Rider to the fantastical spirits of the original Ghostbusters. For this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray from the Warner Archive Collection, a new scan of an interpositive was performed at 2K by Warner's Motion Picture Imaging facility, followed by appropriate color-correction and cleanup. The resulting image isn't anyone's idea of pretty, with its dull urban palette, but it's an accurate reproduction of Freebie's location photography. The film is filled with San Francisco landmarks like the Transamerica Pyramid and the City Lights bookstore (now, sadly, gone), but Freebie's version of the City by the Bay doesn't attempt to glamorize it. The cityscape through which Freebie and Bean pursue and get pursued features the overcast skies and dim surroundings characteristic of everyday S.F., especially in the depths of the Seventies. Though shot with anamorphic lenses, Freebie's image is surprisingly sharp and detailed for the era, revealing nuanced textures in faces, period wardrobe (yikes!) and gritty metropolitan surroundings. The image is so finely resolved that it sometimes reveals the artifice of the stunt vehicles, with their breakaway glass and bodywork designed to be crumpled. Nightime scenes feature solid blacks, and the film's grain pattern is naturally rendered and visible but not obtrusive. WAC has mastered Freebie at its usual high average bitrate, here 34.99 Mbps.

Freebie and the Bean Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Freebie's original mono soundtrack has been taken from the magnetic master, cleaned of any age-related defects and encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. The dialogue is frequently buried in the mix, as Freebie and Bean talk (and bellow) over each other, and an occasional line, usually from Alan Arkin, overloads and distorts. I have been assured that these issues are inherent in the source and reflect director Richard Rush's intentions (or perhaps his indifference, since the dialogue is secondary to the stunts and physical comedy). The track's dynamic range is sufficient to support the action sequences, although no one would ever mistake the sound editing for a modern production. The incongruously jocular score is by Dominic Frontiere, and its style and themes anticipate the composer's future collaboration with Rush on The Stunt Man.

Freebie and the Bean Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The sole extra is a trailer, which has been remastered in 1080p. WAC's 2009 DVD of Freebie and the Bean was similarly bare.

Freebie and the Bean Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Alan Arkin reportedly dismissed Freebie as "garbage", but the film has garnered some prestigious fans over the years, including Stanley Kubrick (though some dispute this) and Peter O'Toole. The latter's admiration for Freebie made him willing to talk to Rush about The Stunt Man, and the result was a casting coup that netted O'Toole an Oscar nomination and helped make Rush's best film the idiosyncratic masterpiece it is. Freebie was never a film for everyone's taste, and that's even more true today when treating police misconduct as a joke is a tougher sell. But the film's energy is infectious and its influence is indisputable. WAC's Blu-ray presentation is superior and recommended.