Freedomland (2006)

Excellent but underrated film

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Contains spoilers .... This movie had some good moments, the acting was terrific, the portrayals of both sides of the blue line was pretty balanced, and the story line was compelling.But with all the realistic character studies, they completely ruined the ending. The writers obviously had zero knowledge of narcissistic mothers and the limits of the four year old mind. Right at the end the whole story went off the rails because they tried to make the mother a more sympathetic character than she was. And they attributed a complex mental thought process to a four year old that would have been impossible. I came away frustrated and irritated that they completely messed up the ending.I was also dumbfounded at the lack of resolution with the brother. He was a visible character, then he just seemed to melt away. He never confronted his sister with the awful facts, and with her cover up of what really must have happened. I gave the movie four stars for the good parts, but the movie, as a whole, let me down.

In the interest of full disclosure, just the actors alone first drew me to this film. To also know that it was penned by Richard Price made it fairly certain for me that I would respect the work of everyone involved. It is a kind of bias, but time is limited these days so I make my movie choices accordingly. The fact that I only now saw the film in 2013 should provide a perspective of how deficient my movie watching has become.All of that being said, "Freedomland" assembles every element that makes a film superior, at least for me. The acting is realistic and the story compelling. The racial tension that becomes so palpable also seems very real - given what has happened through the years in so many major cities. One of my favorite lines in the film, during a Spike Lee-esque racial demonstration is when one offended member of the community says "Who do you think you are? This ain't Mississippi!" and then soon afterward "Hillbilly!" It should no longer be shocking to anyone in the U.S. how much things start to resemble much of the Southern region of the country in the heat of racial strife. Watching two of the finest actors of our times - Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore is mesmerizing. What they do with this material is utterly consuming. It's always easy to poke holes into films, especially in a story like this, but if you suspend disbelief at a few points, the characterizations are sure to draw you in. Both of these characters are aware of very distinct vulnerabilities that for reasons that may not be apparent will become so eventually. But not with any sort of traditional Hollywood roundup, which is another beauty of this film.Another fine element of this film is the special treatment that relatives of police officers often get, since Julianne Moore's character's brother happens to be a hotheaded policeman. However, as it will soon become apparent, they are not exactly as close as one might have assumed. Edie Falco does a turn as a representative of mothers of children who have been molested, kidnapped or killed. Her intimate conversation with Julianne Moore is the stuff of honest filmmaking and capsulizes what the film is really about. The rest of the story demonstrates what happens after convenient lies and their resultant assumptions are spun out of control.

I had heard nothing of this film before viewing it. I was going through movies on TV one night and stumbled across this purely because I noticed Samuel L. Jackson as the star. While it held my interest well enough, was competently made, and had a fairly cohesive script, something about this film doesn't work. "Freedomland" eschews action for some pedantic sociological musings on race, but fails to get anywhere or reach any conclusions because none of the provocative subject matter is really examined; just simply presented in the context of a tired, tired missing child story.The missing child scenario is nothing new. In fact, it's the subject of so many TV crime dramas as well as hour long forensic crime documentaries that frankly the very premise of this film has been beaten to death both from an entertainment and informational standpoint. What is meant to be the "big reveal" that heads up the third act is pretty well hammered into the viewer within the first however. There is no subtlety once the idea of Brenda being responsible is first (or subsequently) broached and there is never a bit of exposition to lead us to any other conclusion. Maybe this was intentional, but I tend to think not since the entirety of the third act is dedicated to understanding the details of the child's death and disposal. But even if the point was not to be engaged in the mystery, what we're left with is an unexplored and overblown study of where race, crime, and authority meet.Plenty of films have dealt with whites vs. blacks. A decent few have even explored reverse discrimination. What the purpose of this film was I could not say. The material wasn't presented in any sort of thought-provoking way. Instead, we get this completely overblown representation of how white cops deal with a black neighborhood where a black criminal might be hiding out. The housing project is laughably treated in a way reminiscent of fascist Germany with the white cops nothing more than mindless, bloodthirsty goons. Jackson attempts to be a sort of liaison between the two but ends up as some kind of pariah for both camps. His character's role in all the racial tension is very murky and undefined; I'm not really sure what he added as he did nothing to ease tensions or even get anyone to think about what the hell it was they were doing. To top it off, nothing is gained, learned, or even really lost at the end of it all. There's no way to even begin to think about the issue (not that it was terribly complex in the first place) due to the cartoonish detention of an entire housing project.Up until now, we just have a movie without a message. Not that it's a bad thing, but it also fails to entertain on a visceral level. Worst of all it wants to have a message, or make some kind of statement, but doesn't even come close. Sometimes, the performance of the actors is so engaging that it need not be flawless when it comes to things like "the plot." Here is where I am most disturbed by this movie; I cannot stand Julianne Moore's performance as Brenda. I don't know if I dislike it because the role is unnerving and supposed to be unnerving, or if it's bad acting. Moore is over the top and difficult to watch and impossible to like, but part of me thinks that all of this may actually be the point of her performance. Jackson is numbingly dull in his role as whatever he is. He generally has a knack for uttering hilarious lines at least once per movie (scratch Cleaner) but in Freedomland he is a perfunctory character making no use of his acting skills.I won't say the film has actual plot holes, but it does leave a lot of things unresolved that are specifically brought to the viewer's attention. Lorenzo's asthma, Brenda's history of drug use, her brother's Over Zealous 5000 role, the relevance of the 'Freedomland' location, and so on. Sure, you can watch this film and make sense of it. It's not unwatchable, it's just a poorly made film on top of a script rife with poor social commentary. I don't think it's the actors' faults for their shortcomings as characters, it's that the screenwriter couldn't do any better than these one dimensional characters. Even with all of Moore's outlandish acting, she only ever exhibited this sort of nervous panic despite her varying situations. Watch it if you won't, but certainly don't pay to see this.

Freedomland is NOT a thriller, a crime movie or a melodrama. It is not even a movie about the oppression of African-Amiericans or the current shape of racism. If this is what you expect to see, you've probably been mislead and you're bound to be disappointed.Freedomland is a story about one subject and one subject only: LOVE. Deep, complex, multi-layered love that can sometimes lead to dark places.Thrill and crime and skin color are present, of course, but they only serve as tools. A movie is only as good as the tools used to construct it, and this movie happens to use superb tools in all areas - script, acting, directing, filming, music and sound.I read many reviews that blame the film of having too many incomplete and/or irrelevant subplots. For me, this is one of the most coherent movies I've ever seen. I watched it several times and I couldn't find a single shot that was misplaced or redundant - as long as you don't look for the next turn in the plot but judge every piece of film-making by its contribution to the main theme.It takes a little while for this theme to manifest itself, which is why you should watch it more than once - it's the only way to appreciate every moment. I surely will watch it again.