I'll watch it for a little while if it's on, but it's not a must-see, at all

Quinoa1984

I enjoy the 1990 movie Flashback, though mostly for it's first 45-50 minutes. That section has some extra pep, if that's the word, in a kind of double-crossing wacky comedy involving a former 60s radical rebel, Huey Walker (Dennis Hopper, at first in a sweet hippie get-up), who got arrested, escaped, went on the lam, and then got arrested again for an 'incident' involving Spiro Agnew's train in 1969. When things don't go so right at all when Buckner (Kiefer Sutherland, a sort of prototype of his character on 24 I'd wager) gets the screws turned on him when tricked into thinking he's been slipped LSD. Walker looks like he's making his escape after shaving his beard, and even with the chance of great publicity for his new book. But a wrong turn comes via a couple of average knuckleheads (Michael McKean one of them, not with nearly enough to be his usual comedic best), and then another cross turned by the local sheriff who doesn't want anything reported on the treatment towards Buckner in prison. So, in short, all of this is actually pretty entertaining, with some funny bits scattered all around, and a great flow for dialog that goes around during the train ride between Buckner and Walker (I also enjoyed, even as slight amusing stuff, the scenes in the woods at night).

But then the screenwriter takes a sharp turn into contrivance, and the film basically never fully recovers- Buckner leads Walker to his first home as a kid, a commune where he was originally named 'Free' and gradually gets a change of heart from the middle-aged lady who resides there now. All of this might spark up a twinkle in some old hippie fogey's eye, but it just seemed like a sharp shift in the tone that wasn't needed. Maybe the writer &/or director couldn't think of a better way to keep the story moving (once it gets to its generic conclusions involving a chase and some minor violence on the train, it's only passable and at worst pretty trite), so they had to insert a fluffy commune/hippie piece with Hopper the only one making it only minutely worthwhile. A shame really, as I liked watching chunks of the film early on a totally guilty pleasure vein as an admirer of the trashy exploitation pictures of the flower power era (and, to an extent, trashy 80s FBI/cop thrillers too). Hopper and Sutherland don't make a bad odd couple either, all things considered. But it's not a puzzle either as to why I'd have not too much trouble finding it in the cheap-video bin at the store. Maybe better if you're hardcore fans of either actor; as a coda for Easy Rider, however, it's really lacking that 'something' of that film.

score 6/10

Quinoa1984 9 January 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1568647/