REVIEWS
Freedomland
MOVIE
You'd think a film would be at least decent with such veteran and talented actors as Julianne Moore, Edie Falco and Samuel L. Jackson in the title roles. Freedomland has all three
actors and still manages to be a cliched, stereotypical mess of a thriller. Advertised as a film dealing with child kidnapping and racial tension in an urban neighborhood,Freedomland
fails to deliver either.
The talented Julianne Moore plays a poorly educated, mentally unstable mother. After her son is inadvertently kidnapped during a carjacking, Samuel
L. Jackson's character, a seasoned cop, steps in to help find the boy. Edie Falco plays a neighborhood mother who is the head of a missing child retrieval group. What follows is a plot ridden with too many stories to tell. The film tries, and fails, to focus on four different stories; all feel abrupt.
While Freedomland has its emotionally engaging moments, mostly in Moore and Falco's scenes, the majority of the plot feels like a regurgitated, predictable Law and Order episode.
One of the reasons for the film's failure is in the meager script. Moore and Jackson's characters become so excessive it's almost laughable. All the supporting characters are ridiculously unoriginal: the angry, abrasive white cop,
the abusive black men and the sassy black woman, whose mere presence becomes a display of racial stereotypes.
Falco gives the most genuine performance and is quite moving. Moore gives her character an emotional depth that is potent at times. Jackson, despite being the main star in the film, does not impress, although he does deliver a few laughs.
Freedomland has tender and painful moments of genuine emotion, but, for the most part, the film is a genuine waste of talent.
South Wind 12
Rated: R,113 minutes
★★
Sarah Tucker
★ You'll wish you were dead. ★★ You'll want to leave the theater early. ★★★ You'll say "ch". ★★★★ You'll rave to everyone who asks. ★★★★ You'll have a religious experience
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16> JAYPLAY 02.23.2006