Movie Review

Freedomland

"Freedomland" takes place during two days in the Armstrong projects, a place that detective Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson) treats almost as a second home. He is more keen on helping the people in the neighborhood than arresting them when something goes wrong, which is a method that has earned him a place as the neighborhood's authority figure. Only the sanctity of the neighborhood is soon disturbed by a woman named Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore), a recovering drug addict living in the next town over who also happens to be an assistant teacher in the projects. She claims that she was mugged by a black man who ran off with her car, with her son in the back seat. Soon, the entire neighborhood is crawling with cops and television people, and Lorenzo is forced to take a side - either Brenda's or the neighborhood's.

All he wants to do is find the child, which he finds even more difficult because he feels Brenda is detached and not being exactly honest with him. He teams with a mother named Karen Colluci (Edie Falco), the leader of a community group who helps find missing children. Karen has lost a child herself and considers it her life's work to protect others from what happened to hers. Only as tensions begin to spill over and Brenda's hotheaded brother (Ron Eldard) continues to fuel the flames, it becomes a race against time for Lorenzo and Karen to find out the truth before a neighborhood war breaks out.

It's hard not to think of Natalee Halloway when watching "Freedomland," not just because of its probing of child abduction, but also just in thinking that if she were black, would there be as much media coverage about her? At the beginning of the film, only a small group of people led by Karen travel along the streets with signs for a missing little black girl while later cameras and news crews and police blockades are all set up to help find Cody. This is only one in a sea of differences that screenwriter Richard Price brings up in this film. There are essentially two social issues here, one dealing with child abduction while the other dealing with the racial divide. Only it's how Price so powerfully and gut-wrenchingly combines these two elements together that allows the movie?s final message to resonate so strongly.

Price has managed to do what last year's overblown, stereotype-riddled "Crash" never could, in that he has zeroed in on humanity itself, at its best and worst, its ugliness and its saving graces. As the film continues on, black people become prisoners in their own neighborhood, of which they become vocally and violently opposed too. The police, already agitated by prior problems caused by the people in the neighborhood, now have one more thing to throw onto the fire. Police brutality, a place known as freedomland (which is supposedly based on truth) where abducted children were held, and senseless violence are also introduced here. This becomes so heavy handed that it's hard not to say how reassuring it is to see someone like Karen Colluci at the halfway point, a woman bent more on protection than destruction. Roth and Price take us on a whirlwind of emotions - shock, fear, admiration, anger, and so much more and they do it in a way that just kicks your ass five ways from Sunday. They've set up a potboiler all stemming from a missing child and it's a simmering look at the racial divide.

Add to that, three people (well, two, but Samuel L. Jackson is great in this too) who should really be in the race for an Oscar right now, Edie Falco, and Julianne Moore. This movie was supposed to be released in December but for some reason the studio thought it had a better shot at making money in February. Sometimes the Hollywood system seems to be managed by Forrest Gump, but anyway, these are two performances I hope are remembered by the end of this year. Julianne Moore gives a performance that can best be described as indescribable. She plays her recovering drug addict as a woman covered in her own filth, a simpleton, exhausted all the time, seemingly despondent. She runs the gamut from being plain pathetic to completely unsympathetic, but it's a brave performance nonetheless, which I think is what keeps her character so interesting. There is a 12-minute monologue that Brenda gives towards the end of the film and it is disturbing, uncomfortable, and gut wrenching.

Edie Falco and Samuel L. Jackson bring some balance to this movie about a world gone completely haywire. Falco shows a comforting, unpretentious woman in Karen. This is not someone looking for vengeance. She is someone looking for some kind of sense, and in a world gone haywire, there is something just automatically compelling about that. She, too, gives a monologue in this film about what she would do if she met the man who abducted her son, but it is more along the lines of being bold, rational, and heartbreaking. I only wish her character were given some closure by the end of this film. And Samuel L. Jackson, though not given as meaty a role as Moore or Falco, brings an intense rationale and sympathy to a man helping an emotionally lost mother, who he can?t help but keep second-guessing.

"Freedomland" is as tough a drama as they come, which is probably more than enough to scare people away from it. If I said it had rainbows and butterflies, would you go? Probably not I guess. It does have a happy ending, however, but it feels out of place and forced. And because the film strings so many different plot points together, it does feel like it ends in at least three or four different ways - and even then, some characters are still never given any closure. Only it's not enough to subtract from the brilliance on display. This is the most visceral and challenging film I've seen about race relations in a really long time. It?s the worst, and the best, all at the same time.

Craig's Grade: B+

A	10.9%
B	41.8%
C	31.8%
D	15.3%
F	0.3%