Freejack

A relentlessly lowbrow but well-paced sci-fi actioner. Alex Furlong (Emilio Estevez), a race-car driver, appears to die in a crash, but he’s actually been lifted seconds before the impact (á la Heaven Can Wait) and transported to 2009, when things are so bleak that independent agencies reach back into the past to snatch healthy young male bodies for rich, dying men to inhabit. Estevez is game, and the cast ranges from Mick Jagger (in his first film role since 1970’s Ned Kelly) as a cynical mercenary to David Johansen as Alex’s sweaty friend to Amanda Plummer as an ass-kicking foul-mouthed nun. And there’s Anthony Hopkins in a glorified walk-on as the soon-to-expire millionaire who wants Alex’s body; the joke is that Hopkins is never seen in the flesh — he’s either a hologram or a video image. Freejack is a good Saturday-night time-waster, but given its heady premise (from Robert Sheckley’s 1959 novella “Immortality Inc.”) and its superb production design (by Joe Alves), it could’ve been a lot more. Also with Rene Russo as Alex’s long-lost girlfriend. A scene from the movie is playing on a TV in True Romance.