Freebie and the Bean (1974) on Netflix
R19741h 53mActionComedyCrimeDrama
San Francisco detectives Freebie and Bean have spent fourteen months gathering evidence against racketeer Red Meyers. A Detroit hit man is after Meyers, and the two must keep him alive.
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- Netflix2.1/5
- IMDb6.6/104,090 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes17%
Trailer
Plot summary
Freebie and Bean are maverick detectives on the San Francisco police Intelligence Squad. Freebie is volatile and hungry for gratuities, and wants a transfer to the vice squad that would bring perks at retirement; Bean is neurotic and fastidious, and wants to make lieutenant. For fourteen months the partners have sifted garbage for evidence against Red Meyers, a well-connected racketeer, and their investigation has caused havoc in the city. Over Super Bowl weekend they learn that a Detroit hit man is after Meyers. The district attorney turns down their pretext arrest of Meyers, which was meant to protect him, and tells the two to keep him alive until Monday.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Freebie and the Bean (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Screenwriter Floyd Mutrux said Al Pacino was offered one of the leads, but his agent asked for $250,000 plus a percentage of the profits, so Warner Bros. went with James Caan instead.
- Richard Rush said that when he told John Calley he wanted Alan Arkin for the role, Calley warned him Arkin was "a director killer", recalling that Arkin had put Mike Nichols in the hospital while making Catch-22, but Rush took his chances anyway.
- Originally scripted as a serious crime drama, the film became what is now known as the "buddy-cop" genre through the bantering, improvisational acting of James Caan and Alan Arkin, and was popular enough to spawn franchises including Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop.
- Richard Rush called casting Alan Arkin "a stupid mistake", saying Arkin needed conflict as part of his method and was horribly disruptive on set, and that he had to erase his own laughter from the soundtrack because Arkin and Caan were so funny.
- Richard Rush said he shot the film partly in a Tom and Jerry style, with car chases and crashes and indestructible heroes, then switched to stark realism when Freebie drove around a corner and ploughed through a marching band of children.
- One chase sequence was filmed on an elevated stretch of the since-demolished Embarcadero Freeway and ends with the detectives' police car crashing into an apartment building and landing in an elderly couple's bedroom as they watch television.
- Peter O'Toole agreed to star in The Stunt Man on the basis of Richard Rush's work on Freebie and the Bean.
