Freebie and Bean are your standard iconoclastic movie cops, making their way around San Francisco, grilling people for answers, skirting the law to obtain evidence, and having run-ins with the District Attorney (Alex Rocco) who's quickly running out of patience with them. In between, there's lots of car and motorcycle chases and general vehicular mayhem, including the most famous shot from the movie, where Freebie and Bean drive off an elevated freeway into a third floor apartment.
Freebie and the Bean succeeded at the box office in large part due to the chemistry between James Caan and Alan Arkin. It's been credited as the first cop buddy movie but that's probably a little disingenuous. Certainly the buddy movie had a much bigger hit just a few years before with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and cops generally having partners made that type of plot, from Car 54, Where Are You? (1961) to Adam-12 (1968), already old-hat by the time Freebie and the Bean came out. Still, the banter between the two, while in no way extraordinary, is sold by the two actors quite well based on a great sense of shared timing. The movie also has some big, and unavoidable, problems.
Freebie and the Bean was controversial almost from the start. The character of Bean is referred to that way because Freebie, a rather bigoted character, constantly makes derogatory references towards his partner's Mexican heritage and uses slurs to refer to him. At the same time, he denigrates gay people vigorously and treats women like the garbage he dumps into his trunk at the start of the movie. Even the listing of the "Cast of Characters" has received protests from the start, with the two female leads not even given names. Loretta Swit gets the top "Co-starring" billing and yet is only listed as "Mrs. Meyers" while Valerie Harper doesn't even get that much. She's listed only as "Bean's wife" and, remember, these are supporting characters, not walk-on parts.
Freebie and the Bean is also notable for the multiple car chases and crashes throughout the film. Years later, The Blues Brothers (1980) would rack up more accidents and cause more vehicular mayhem but Freebie and the Bean got there first. The chases and crashes are shot by the great Laszlo Kovacs, though he does a better job when the action is more subdued.
The movie was directed by Richard Rush who enjoyed little success in Hollywood until Freebie and the Bean and when he found it, set to work on his most acclaimed film, The Stunt Man (1980), with Peter O'Toole. That film sat in limbo for a couple of years until it found a distributor in 1980 and it wasn't until fourteen years later that he directed his next, and last, theatrical release, Color of Night (1994).
James Caan was coming out of the best years of his career. After working through the sixties in smaller films, like The Rain People (1969) or his most well-known film of the decade, Lady in a Cage (1964), Caan found international fame as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather in 1972. The following year he was in the Neil Simon hit Cinderella Liberty and after Freebie and the Bean, he would continue to flourish, landing his arguably best role in 1990 with the lead in the adaptation of Stephen King's Misery.
Alan Arkin was a star, too, in 1973 but not one on the rise. He had come to prominence in the sixties with Oscar nominated roles in The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! (1966) and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968) as well as playing the menacing villain in Wait Until Dark (1967). But in 1970, the long-awaited, big budget, star-studded adaptation of Catch-22 underperformed at the box office and fared poorly with critics (unfairly, it should be said). While he was still a bankable star by Freebie and the Bean, it was Caan whose name carried the movie. Arkin stayed in demand though and eventually won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Little Miss Sunshine in 2006.
Finally, one must mention Christopher Morley, the primary villain at the center of the movie, the character so hated by the bigoted Freebie. Morley was a great talent and possibly inspired film history more than most people realize. Years after Freebie and the Bean, Morley was cast as a female friend of Laura on General Hospital, so convincingly that no one watching the show knew it was a man. Later, it was revealed on an episode that he was, in fact, a man. Word has it, though not confirmed, that this was the inspiration for Tootsie (1982).
Freebie and the Bean has its good moments and bad. It may not have invented the buddy movie, a dubious claim at best, but it works as one, with James Caan and Alan Arkin working in perfect comic synchronization. It's a shame they didn't do more together.
Director: Richard Rush
Screenplay: Robert Kaufman (Screenplay), Floyd Mutrux (Story)
Producer: Richard Rush
Music: Dominic Frontiere
Cinematography: Laszlo Kovacs
Film Editor: Michael McLean, Fredric Steinkamp
Art Director: Hilyard Brown
Set Decorator: Ruby Levitt
Cast: Alan Arkin (Bean), James Caan (Freebie), Loretta Swit (Mildred - Meyers' Wife), Jack Kruschen (Red Meyers), Mike Kellin (Lt. Rosen), Paul Koslo (Whitey), Linda Marsh (Barbara - Freebie's Girl), John Garwood (Chauffeur), Alex Rocco (D.A.), Valerie Harper (Consuelo - Bean's Wife), Christopher Morley (Transvestite)
By Greg Ferrara
