Freebie and the Bean

From 48 Hours to Lethal Weapon, the buddy cop story is a sub-genre of action comedy that perhaps reached its apex in the 90s and 00s, though it still pops up from time to time and everyone knows its formula regardless. Freebie and the Bean is an even earlier offering, from the mid 70s, which shows the beginning of the sub-genre’s most familiar elements, albeit as part of a mostly disappointing film, in my opinion.

It Happened One Night is often seen as the original romantic comedy. Sure, there had been romance on film and there had been comedy, and the two often coexisted, but the cadence of guy meets girl, they clash, the fall in love, something gets in the way, and then they get together at the end was refined greatly for the talkie era by It Happened One Night, and the film is often credited as having created the genre, even earlier progenitors like Clara Bow’s It notwithstanding. In the same way, Freebie and the Bean is an early example of a future form in which we can see the building blocks take shape. Though it isn’t credited with creating the genre, as best I know, you can see the essence of the thing beginning to take shape all the same.

In the same vein as the B-Western of decades prior, the heroic lawmen of Freebie and the Bean are given a kind of carte blanche for mayhem as long as it ultimately takes down the criminal. This, of course, would be repeated in the likes of Bad Boys, Rush Hour, or even Lethal Weapon movies. On the other hand, while later buddy cop movies often involve a small investigation that grows into revealing a greater conspiracy, and the detective work behind that acts as a driving element of the story, Freebie and the Bean already have their man and almost all the evidence they need to take him down. He is, however, being targeted by hitmen, so if they want to bring him to justice they have to keep him alive until the star witness arrives, which provides its own form of escalation.

Though not forced to be together through some circumstance of the plot, the two partners are as disparate as the Odd Couple in terms of their outlook. One is a scheming, borderline corrupt danger seeker who’s dream is to get on vice, because that’s where the retirement securing graft can be found. The other is a risk adverse, calculating, family man who dreams of securing a safer assignment where he can rest and vest his pension. Absent here is the classic younger hotshot, older mentor dynamic or the “by the books” vs “the ends justify the means” dichotomy frequently found in later versions of the form, as both partners seem to be about the same age and seniority and neither partner in is even remotely by the book.

And therein lies at least part of why I ultimately didn’t like the film. In our current times, with a greater awareness of, and sensitivity to, the malignancy of extra-judicial actions by the police, it is quite uncomfortable to watch Freebie and the Bean. For starters, the name of the movie is derived from the partners; Freebie, because he abuses his position as a cop to extort free stuff from the citizenry, and the Bean, because he is Mexican. So just some light systemic police corruption and casual racism to start things off. While gathering information, they routinely physically abuse their interviewees, often despite the fact they have no direct involvement with the case; they just happen to know some of the key players. The film asks you so accept this as justified because these interviewees are ex-cons and therefore criminal scum. At one point, Freebie even essentially threatens one guy with sexually assaulting his girlfriend if he won’t talk. Maybe, at the time, a combination of the kind of craving for safer streets that gave rise to Death Wish and the almost comedic absurdity of the main character’s actions allowed audiences to give it a pass, but for a modern viewer, their actions are just too mean, too real, and too immoral to overlook. I got the sense that you are supposed to laugh and have a good time at the bickering antics and almost satirical levels of corruption and incompetence, but I was mostly too put off and disgusted to get into that headspace.

On that note, the movie is very much trying to be a comedy. I just rarely found it funny. The bickering dialogue was more grating and mean spirited than light and witty, with the two constantly pushing each other’s buttons and crossing each other’s boundaries in ways that seemed more abusive than funny. The prevalence of absurd mayhem becomes numbing. There were some moments, mostly in intricately choreographed car chases, where both the action and comedy were expertly mixed with a dollop of absurdity that elicited a hearty laugh from me, but beyond that, most of the moments of total excess missed the mark. For example, there is a multi-car pile up with more and more cars crashing in until it starts to stretch the limits of believability. A similar gag is done in Blues Brothers, a half decade later, with a much stronger comedic voice and sense of visual storytelling, to great effect. However, in Freebie and the Bean it ends up merely testing your suspension of disbelief. Even the subversion of the film’s cliched 70s bleak ending into yet another bickering back and forth left me cold.

An extremely charitable interpretation would be that the film is trying to have its cake and eat it too. It is trying to be a “if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry” version of Serpico where the corruption, excessive violence, and bleakness of the era are all on display, but behind this veneer of absurdity that lets you recognize but detach from it before it gets you too down. However, I think this interpretation is being too kind to the film. Its treatment of its central characters never asks you to do anything other than see them as the heroes of the story, even as they abuse their positions of authority, and the movie revels in its absurdities and excesses in a way that doesn’t seem the least bit deep. In some ways, it even plays more like a gritty crime drama that subverts its tropes for humorous payoffs, than a movie designed from the ground up to deftly interweave cultural commentary with populist comedy.

As such, it is an interesting early touchstone for buddy cop tropes that misses the mark on most everything. The straight comedy bits are rarely funny enough, the action is too excessive to feel real and engaging, the characters make you hate them, and the perspectives on civil rights and permissible police behavior are antiquated at best and barbaric at worst. There are better ways to spend your time and money.

Would Recommend: If you are doing an anthropological deep dive on the evolving politics of the buddy cop movie.

Would Not Recommend: If you have good taste in action, comedy, or movies.