As the world bids their farewells to Academy Award-winning actor Alan Arkin today, a time of reflection is sure to follow in due time; indeed, whether he tickled our funnybones or made our jaws drop with his stage-worthy gravitas, Arkin is sure to be remembered for many turns, among them The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Argo, and his Oscar-winning performance as Little Miss Sunshine.
But for some, he may be remembered as one half of the depraved duo that spearheaded Freebie and the Bean, where he starred alongside James Caan as Dan “Bean” Delgado, a sergeant detective whose aversion to playing by the rules is only matched by his aversion to harboring redeeming qualities in general. As you can imagine, it sounds like Arkin would prefer if you didn’t remember him for this one.
But while Arkin always made it clear that he only did Freebie and the Bean to make a bit of dough, the film and his role in it did end up finding a fairly lucrative fan in Quentin Tarantino, who was all too happy to tell the The Playlist back in 2018 that he considered the film, which boasts a 20 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a masterpiece.
It’s not terribly surprising that the Pulp Fiction mastermind has a soft spot for this film; brutal violence is the name of the game for both Freebie and the Bean and a fair shake of the filmmaker’s library, so that particular sense of kinship makes sense.
With respect to that, it sounds like Tarantino’s an outlier when it comes to giving Freebie and the Bean a thumbs up, so if you plan on honoring Arkin with a marathon of his filmography, you might just benefit from skipping this film as much as the late actor’s self-imposed dignity would.
