"Freejack" is a frustrating film. It starts off well and has an excellent premise. But then, well, it all falls apart after that.

When the story begins, Alex (Emelio Estevez) is starting an auto race. However, something extraordinary takes place. As his car flies out of control and he is about to die, his body is stolen from the future. Why? Because in the future, it's not illegal to retrieve bodies from the past just before they'd die anyway. And what do they do with these retrieved bodies? Well, the rich and powerful pay fortunes to have them for organ transplants and even entire body transplants where the consciousness of the dying rich person is implanted into these retrieved bodies....and someone wants Alex's body.

The problem with this procedure is that normally they electrically lobotomize these people....but an attack on the truck that retrieved Alex enables him to escape. Now, lots of bounty hunters are looking to capture him...alive. And Alex has no idea WHAT is going on here!

So why did it fall apart after Alex arrives in the future? Well, there are MANY reasons. First, he is transported from 1991 to 2009 and simply too much has happened during the interim...way too much. Folks in the future drive cars, retrieve folks from the past, and fire phasers that might work if it was the year 2100. Second, there really isn't a lot of story...just action, action, action....making the film a bit mindless. A few things about this future also make no sense...such as the shotgun wielding and cursing nun (Amanda Plummer)! What?! And, finally, the central premise makes no sense. After all, if the retrievers lose Alex...why not just retrieve some other guy from the past?!?! Why is HE so important?! With many millions of deaths between 1991 and 2009, they surely could have found someone else!

I actually saw this on cable back about 1993 and thought it was a pretty cool movie. Well, I just rewatched it in 2021 and think it's pretty dumb. Times do change as do people. Hmmm....1993 and 2021...kinda like 1991 and 2009!

Though the plot of Freejack has been used over and over again in film, at least as far back as Boris Karloff's original The Mummy, it's told quite interestingly here with a lot of good special effects.

Freejack did steal from an earlier film called Millennium that had starred Kris Kristofferson. In that one people from the future were snatching wholesale the persons who were in plane crashes a milli-second before impact killed them to replenish the gene pool.

Here it's only one man, gazillionaire Anthony Hopkins who's company has perfected a kind of time travel. He's in some kind of cryogenic freeze, but his underlings can communicate with a holograph that his mind projects. He's looking for a young healthy specimen who's body he can take over, one before all kinds of disasters, natural and manmade have hit the planet.

He's found one in Emilio Estevez as a race car driver who was killed in a crash in 1992. Like in Millennium, Estevez is snatched from the point of death and transported seventeen years into the future.. Only he proves to be quite the lively corpse and resents what's about to happen to him and escapes.

Estevez's presence has also set off a power play in the company that involves the head of security, Mick Jagger, the Vice President Jonathan Banks, and Rene Russo who was Estevez's old girlfriend back in the day.

Freejack has some nice special effects in it and good performances by all the principal players. In the supporting cast also look for good performances by David Johansen as Estevez's former agent, Amanda Plummer as a rifle toting nun, and Frankie Faison who's become a philosophical gourmet cook of rats.

Science fiction fans will especially like Freejack.

Auto racer Alex Furlong (Emilio Estevez) has a horrible crash in front of his girlfriend Julie Redlund (Rene Russo). He is kidnapped by Victor Vacendak (Mick Jagger) at the moment of impact and transported into the future known as a Freejack. The US is a dystopian crime-ridden world with McCandless Corp as the biggest and most powerful company. The head of the corporation Ian McCandless (Anthony Hopkins) had died and transferred his mind into a vast computer called the Spiritual Switchboard. Julie Redlund is now a high-power executive in McCandless. When criminals attack Victor's convoy, Alex manages to escape. Victor must hunt down Alex for Ian McCandless who has 36 more hours to transfer his mind into a body.

This is one of those cheesy 90s sci-fi movies. Lots of money and effort had been spent on making the cars look futuristic. It mostly leaves them looking cheesy. The whole thing is a bit of cheese fest. Mick Jagger is interesting as a villain but he never stops being Mick Jagger. There is plenty of action and some car chases. It all adds up to something that isn't quite up to par but has some memorable cheese.