AllMovie

This formulaic film has some amusing moments, but feels too much like the high concept pilot for a TV situation comedy series. The highly contrived plot (an FBI agent escorting his high-profile prisoner by train) is certainly annoying, while Dennis Hopper appearing as an aging radical in handcuffs is somehow just sad for those who remember the actor's rebellious politics and spirit of creative invention in Easy Rider (1969). While screenwriter David Loughery gets inventive with a twist involving Huey (Hopper) playing psychological mind games with his uptight FBI agent captor (Kiefer Sutherland), the film subsequently takes an unwelcome turn into the serious. Despite Hopper's energetic performance and a nostalgic, well-constructed soundtrack of genuine '60s rock music hits, Flashback is a phony and artificial piece of work built on a precarious foundation of clichés regarding the generation gap between yuppie and hippie.