Freebie and the Bean

Filled with tons of gratuitous violence and more car crashes than The Blues Brothers, this 1974 comedy is also one of the funniest cop/buddy movies you will ever see, thanks to the great chemistry between stars Alan Arkin and James Caan. The pair plays a couple of San Francisco detectives who are out to build a case against the local numbers runner. They’re good cops, but everything they touch turns to crap: witnesses die, leads turn violent and ugly and, more likely than not, they crash their car halfway to their next clue. The idea that violence can be funny may be politically incorrect these days, but Freebie and the Bean (a nickname for Arkin’s character that refers to his Mexican heritage – how’s that for political incorrectness!) are throwbacks to the old Keystone Cops films rather than the descendants of 1971’s Dirty Harry. If you can’t see the comedy in a car crash, don’t watch it. Or better yet, watch it with the remote in your hand so you can fast-forward through the accidents (which means you should fast forward just about every time they get into a car) and enjoy the acrobatic banter between two great actors at the top of their game.