Soft-Core Sadism

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

FREEBIE AND THE BEAN

Directed by RICHARD RUSH

Screenplay by ROBERT KAUFMAN

Freebie (James Caan) is a cop whose corruption is supposed to be charming. If, for example, a witness he is guarding enters a fancy clothing store, he will spot a few fire-ordinance violations and trade silence for a new jacket. The Bean (Alan Arkin) is Freebie's partner, an excitable Chicano who frets about Freebie's hustles and reckless driving habits. He also worries, in a supposedly comic manner, that his wife Consuelo (Valerie Harper) may be cuckolding him during the many overtime hours he devotes ineptly, if eagerly, to duty.

Even so brief a summary of this film indicates that its makers have got their bets down on everything that is currently going in the movies: cops v. crooks in one crazy car chase after another, two males who have so darn much fun kidding around with each other that their women are seen only as encumbrances or conveniences, and plenty of ethnic joking. All of this could be seen as fairly routine commercialism were there not a persistent and nasty strain of sadism. Some of it is soft core (a threat of defenestration here, a hint of female bondage there). But some is as ugly as anything one is likely to see. Between funnies, for example, the cheery heroes cold-bloodedly empty their revolvers into gangsters they corner in a men's room.

Caan and Arkin are actors of skill and style, and they are able to cover the basic bad taste of this mess for a while. Director Rush has a gift for staging imaginative action sequences (one of his car chases ends in a third-floor apartment). Somehow, though, these flashes of professionalism only deepen the dismay over Freebie and the Bean. They really ought to find something better to do with themselves. So should potential customers.

qed Richard Schickel

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