…a tough guy comedy classic, fearlessly reflecting the racial and sexual issues of 1974 within a buddy cop narrative, with Arkin and Caan showing great charisma as the cops involved…

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 2, 2023

A cold, heartless, and deadening picture.

| Sep 21, 2022

The film can be confusing at times since it seems to go in too many directions but Morley's portrayal is bewitching.

| May 12, 2022

Robert Kaufman wrote the screenplay from a story by Floyd Mutrux, who is credited as the executive producer, and both men should be forced to spend the next few decades watching what they have wrought.

| May 5, 2021

These two gifted actors... totally fail to make their bestial roles charismatic or even moderately appealing.

| May 5, 2021

The movie is such a hopeless confusion of styles and tones and wasted effort and undirected energy that it requires a great deal more than good performances to save it.

| May 5, 2021

The most schizoid film recipe of current memory. It is as if several different cooks had tried to poison the broth.

| May 5, 2021

Too often, producer-director Richard Rush startles us with injected scenes of violence that quickly turn comedic happenings into scenes of dismaying grimness.

| May 5, 2021

Neither screen writer Robert Kaufman nor director Richard Rush could decide if "Freebie and the Bean" was to be a comedy or a blood-and-guts melodrama. For every guffaw there is an equal and opposite scene of someone being shot clubbed or maimed.

| May 5, 2021

One of the most reprehensible film-yarns ever to subvert the original designs of the Keystone Kops. Also, it is, at moments, a talented and hilarious movie, which simply confounds the muddle.

| May 5, 2021

In case bloody bodies don't strike everyone as funny, the movie also features several multiple car accidents.

| May 5, 2021

An offbeat cop flick and one of the year's funniest.

| May 5, 2021

Most of the time you don't know what's going on, what anyone is talking about, or even which one is Freebie and which one is Bean.

| May 5, 2021

Judged on its own, "Freebie and the Bean" is a mess of cheap thrills and mannered acting.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 5, 2021

...boasts a pervasively irreverent sensibility that's reflected most keenly in the behavior of its two protagonists...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 12, 2019

One of those obnoxious wisecracking buddy cop movies about dimwit cops that fails to be funny.

| Original Score: C+ | Jul 7, 2017

Freebie (James Caan) is a cop whose corruption is supposed to be charming.

| May 17, 2013

The humor is tasteless and racist, but the action scenes are fantastically choreographed and executed.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 17, 2013

The best darn movie of the seventies you've never seen.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 25, 2009

Back in 1974, this type of frenetic crud was considered to be popular entertainment.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 20, 2009