Like an inappropriate time capsule of 1974, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN wastes a tremendous amount of talent with noise, car crashes and mayhem in place of a story.
James Caan (Freebie) and Alan Arkin (Bean) are San Francisco police detectives who have been chasing mobster Red Meyers for years.
As we pick up the story, they are so close to catching him that they will do ANYTHING to make it happen.
The story is lightweight, every spoken line of dialogue is shouted, and when things get slow, we just get another well staged car chase or massive car crash sequence to keep us going.
Caan is always great, but given little to do here other than shout racist comments at Alan Arkin, whose comic talents are pretty much wasted.
Director Richard Rush made one great movie, "The Stunt Man" in 1980. How that same director turned out this loud, obnoxious, boring, silly movie baffles me.
Look for Valerie Harper in one long scene as Bean's wife, the only quiet scene in the movie that seems like it was edited in from another film. The ending is a bloody, homophobic, violent, tone-deaf disaster. This mess crashes and smashes its way to a D.
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