A loud, glossy thriller telling the story of two unconventional San Francisco cops on a wild chase when they discover there is a contract out on the syndicate boss that they are trying to apprehend. In order to bring him to trial, they must first keep him alive.
Caan and Arkin make an interesting team in a slick movie high on violence and spectacular car chases.
Hugely tasteless (particularly the flurry of racist jokes from Caan about Arkin’s Mexican origins) and at times brutally violent, this is a film where most of the characters are treated with contempt.
However, director Richard Rush – who wouldn’t make his next film, The Stunt Man, until six years later – puts so much energetic inventiveness into the turbulence, you’re almost convinced he doesn’t mean it.
Bean
Alan Arkin
Freebie
James Caan
Red Meyers
Jack Kruschen
Meyers’s wife
Loretta Swit
Consuelo, Bean’s wife
Valerie Harper
Freebie’s girl
Linda Marsh
Lt Rosen
Mike Kellin
Whitey
Paul Koslo
Chauffeur
John Garwood
District Attorney
Alex Rocco
Director
Richard Rush
