Freedomland (2006)

Samuel L. Jackson’s movie career is an enigma to me. He has been in some very good films, and many very bad ones. While I understand that not every film project works out the way everyone wants it to, it seems that Jackson’s movies in particular tend to be all over the place in terms of ratings and reviews. Does he just accept every single role he’s offered? Because, really, it’s pretty difficult to explain his resumé when you look closely.

That’s one of the reasons I’m always wary about watching a Samuel L. Jackson flick. I can either get something really good (like Pulp Fiction) or something terrible (like xXx or Snakes on a Plane). So as I sat down to watch Freedomland last weekend, I couldn’t help but wonder which category this movie would fall under. Unfortunately, it was the latter.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The film opens with a scene establishing Jackson’s character, a cop named Lorenzo Council, as more or less the community liaison to the Armstrong Projects. Lorenzo grew up in the projects, so he knows everybody there. When there’s trouble, he’s the one who wants to handle it because he feels he can give everybody a fair shake. In addition, it seems that the Armstrong residents still like and respect Lorenzo; nobody considers him to be a sellout just because he’s a cop.

However, Lorenzo’s relationship with the Armstrong residents changes forever the night he meets a white woman named Brenda Martin (played by Julianne Moore). She’s found walking through the projects in the middle of the night, obviously in shock. Sh has blood on her hands and seems completely disoriented.

After taking her to the hospital, Lorenzo starts to piece her story together. She was carjacked while driving through Armstrong (where she worked as a volunteer at a children’s center). Lorenzo gets the feeling that Brenda is withholding crucial information, so he keeps pressing until she finally answers him: Her four-year-old son Cody was sleeping in the back of the car.

With a missing child involved, the case changes dramatically. Brenda’s brother Danny (Ron Eldard), who’s also a cop, horns in on the investigation and demands that Armstrong be shut down until Cody is found. The chief actually thinks this is a good idea, so the Armstrong residents are told they can’t leave until the situation is resolved. This infuriates all of the residents, as they feel the cops wouldn’t make the same kind of fuss if a black child was missing. Thus the film introduces this running subplot of an impending race riot at the projects.

Meanwhile, Lorenzo keeps on investigating and questioning Brenda. He also accepts outside assistance from Karen Collucci (Edie Falco), a woman who runs a group dedicated to finding missing children. Right from the start Karen suspects that Brenda had something to do with Cody’s disappearance, or that she at least knows where the boy is now.

The rest of the film then deals with Lorenzo’s attempts to get at the truth despite the Brenda’s unwillingness to be completely forthcoming and despite pressure from the Armstrong residents to open up the projects again. Lorenzo finally does uncover the truth in a somewhat surprising manner.

My Reaction: I’ve read that Freedomland was based on a 1998 Richard Price novel of the same name. I haven’t read the book, but have seen comments from people familiar with both the original material and the film. Apparently, a great deal of critical backstory material and quite a few key characters were left out of the screenplay. This is inexplicable to me, since Price adapted his own novel for the movie here! I mean, obviously you can’t fit everything from a book into a film, but you’d hope that the author would include the important stuff.

For example, the minute Brenda Martin appeared on screen, I got the feeling that something was not quite right with her. She wasn’t just in shock; it seemed like there was something wrong upstairs, if you get my drift. While we never got an explanation for this in the film, the novel provides background info that could potentially explain her state of mind (like the fact that she was involved in a cult for some time).

Anyway, getting back to the film here, I thought Julianne Moore’s performance really detracted from the story. She’s usually a fine actress, but she totally overdid it here and just seemed wrong for the part to begin with. She bugged every time she was on screen, and didn’t elicit a single ounce of sympathy or compassion from me.

I didn’t understand the whole race riot theme and wondered why it had to be a part of the movie at all. I believe that this could have been a more effective film if, instead of using the riot as a subplot, the filmmakers had spent more time rounding out the Brenda Martin character. I didn’t even care about the riot because none of those people were involved in the plot in any other way. By replacing those scenes with backstory on Brenda, this might have been a good movie.

Overall, I found Freedomland to be pretty boring from start to finish. I wasn’t invested in the characters and as a result didn’t care what they were going through on screen. I give this film 1 star out of 5, and will tell you that there’s simply no good reason to see it.