Outrageous, obnoxious, violent, sexist, profane, vulgar, and raw in almost all aspects of its production, this crimer-comedy from 1974 is infamous not just for its aforementioned exploitation movie-poster adjectives but the hilarious chemistry between co-bastards James Caan and Alan Arkin. Truly the prototype 70s movie that defies even the most elementary descriptions: is it a comedy? A fascist cop thriller? A slapstick kid's movie? All of the above. Well, maybe not a kid's movie, though I caught it on network t.v.--illegally--as a impressionable 8 year old. Detectives Caan and Arkin are looking to nail a blowhard crime kingpin in San Francisco, and, basically, reduce the entire city to rubble in the process. Additionally, the number of endangered background extras featured on-screen must have resulted in numerous lawsuits and--very likely--hospitalizations. Fact has it that Caan and Arkin both allied against director Richard Rush during production, their excuse being he was jeopardizing their lives. One scene depicting an airborne Plymouth Fury being birthed out of a tunnel beneath the Panam building, at easily 50 m.p.h., and nearly decapitating a man, is beyond explanation. As if the immensely destructive, punctuating car chases aren't enough to earn the movie its R rating, the completely rancid dialog between its leads makes the buddy cop films of the 80s appear positively anemic. Nonetheless, right when you think the film's poorly written--more like scribbled--female characters couldn't get any worse (or neglected), the luminous Valerie Harper appears in a knockout scene as the wife of Arkin. Here the movie takes on an entirely different mood, providing both actors the opportunity to humanize an otherwise staunchly sociopathic tale of brutal police work tempered by wonderful doo-doo and ethnic humor. Plenty of highlights, including cameos by both Paul Koslo and a supremely icky Christopher Morley. The joyful music score is obviously another stab at political correctness. It's bouncy theme song inclined my over-age toddler's ass to tune in, possibly expecting a movie about wacky clowns rather than dirty cops who drive cars through parades, shoot people while they're dropping deuce, yell racial epithets, abuse suspects, talk about deviant love-making, and destroy everything from art fairs to posh restaurants with vehicles, motorcycles, or their bare hands. For connoissuers of 70s cinema, this is the one.

Thoroughly enjoyable to watch, Alan Arkin and James Caan make a great comedy duo. Plus, perhaps the only time you'll ever see a car crash through a third-story window.Here's a spoiler -- and what lifts this movie above most others in the genre: After an hour and a half of silly shenanigans, you suddenly discover that there was a serious plot going on. One is tempted to start the film over from the beginning because you clearly weren't paying enough attention.The one downside of the film, IMHO, is the ending, where one guy that's supposedly seriously hurt is suddenly OK and being silly again. That didn't work for me.

For what it is - a cop buddy movie - FREEBIE AND THE BEAN is the paragon. Violent action, high comedy, low humor, more car wrecks than a weekend with the Lohans, and something rare in any genre: two hours of genuine sympathy between grown men. Plus Alex Rocco. Alan Arkin and James Caan play cops in love, an un-ironic friendship displayed with banter and charisma. Mutual appreciation and respect is palpable in every scene. (This is even more impressive in light of Alan Arkin's public denigration of working with Richard Rush and this particular film-making experience generally.) They are aided by a Laurel & Hardy-meet-Lenny Bruce sensibility in the script and direction, which demands the extent of their abilities at the height of their powers. Gifted comedians both, Arkin and Caan invest the technical stuff - timing, delivery, physicality - with real emotion. It doesn't hurt that Robert Kaufman and Floyd Mutrux have given them wonderful things to say, and wonderful situations in which to say them. Richard Rush uses a lot of carnival music, and this is not his only evidence of carny taste. He likes to titillate, shock and amaze. That's all fine, as far as entertainment goes, but Rush has aspirations. Throughout his career he's made gestures to the absurd and surreal, with mixed results. His movies often seem giddy, his hand showing on purpose, pawing in self-reflexive gesture. This kind of trapeze act doesn't always work. THE STUNTMAN, for all its many virtues, does not pull off 100% of the tricks up its sleeve. Fellini and Fosse had a surer hand for that sort of detail. This movie aims lower and succeeds at just about every level, though careening on two wheels. The whole film feels just on the edge of out-of-control: the plot, the story, the action, all strain credibility. The cops kill people, destroy public and private property, bicker, donnybrook; the robbers preen, prance and pratfall. The jokes and the violence push the limits of good taste. And the guy on that trials bike isn't even trying to look like James Caan. But it's all part of the cuckoo world of Me Generation Hollywood, show biz kids drunk with power and roaring for approval. You can almost catch a buzz off all the cocaine blowing around the post-hippie pre-yuppie San Francisco set.

It's the antidote for The Laughing Policeman, that grim "police procedural" from 1973; it's Freebie and the Bean, a crude, politically incorrect, and very funny buddy movie for the sophomore in all of us.Alan Arkin and James Caan play a couple of San Francisco PD Inspectors on the hunt for . . . oh, who cares? The procedural part of the movie doesn't matter. The fun is in Arkin's neurotic and fastidious Bean (you have to forgive the racial slur right from the start) and Caan decked out in a leisure suit and looking for the next "five-finger discount" (hence, the name "Freebie").It's clearly not a movie for your mom--violent and foul-mouthed, with Arkin accusing his wife of infidelity by demanding to see if she's douched recently, and Caan performing noisy cunnilingus on his girlfriend. It all seems so daring for the 17 year old in 1975, but now, I suspect, I would just cringe and blush at the crudity and concentrate on the hostile chemistry between Arkin and Caan.After so many serious cop-dramas from the early '70s, FATB came across as something of a breath of different air. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a good movie or a nice one, but there is an entertainment value and a vitality that makes it worth watching.And don't miss the cop car through the side of the apartment building!