"Freedomland" fails to deliver the goods

By Maria Miranda
The Collegian

With its racially-focused plot and a starring cast of Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore, “Freedomland” appears Oscar-worthy. There is only one problem: it tries too hard.

There is simply too much going on. Director Joe Roth (“Christmas with the Kranks”) and writer Richard Price (“Shaft”), who wrote the novel and screenplay, attempt to cram Price’s 600-page book into a two-hour time span. Their ambition essentially overloads the movie, leaving it an awkward mixture between a crime thriller and a serious drama.

The film starts with potential. “Freedomland” begins with Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore) stumbling into a New Jersey hospital bloody and stunned. When her shock wears off, Martin tells detective Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson) a horrifying story of how she was carjacked and her 4-year-old son Cody was asleep in the backseat.

Although it sounds like a clip out of “Unsolved Mysteries,” the film’s drama is derived from both the culprit and where the incident took place. Martin was carjacked by an African-American male in a secluded area between the urban housing projects of Dempsy and her home town of Gannon. The two towns have a history of racial tension.

Here Roth and Price could have easily pursued the racial tension concept, making a strong statement about social conditions. Instead, they exaggerate every scene, turning the film into something out of the 1970s. For example, the projects are put on lockdown, causing riots that Gannon police, who are outside their jurisdiction, instigate.

In the meanwhile, Council suspects Martin was not telling the entire truth about the incident. A parallel plot is then introduced as Council begins to wonder if Martin’s guilty and maybe a bit on the crazy side.

A third plot establishes Council as a trusted confidant in the projects who becomes caught between helping his friends and Martin.

On top of that, non-essential characters are introduced who seem to float in and out the movie. Council has a partner who is never around and a son who is in jail. Martin has a verbally abusive brother who also happens to be a detective in Gannon. Then there are a group of mothers who went around helping find missing children. None of these characters are explored and none of them were in the movie for more than a few scenes.

So why introduce them? Because they are in Price’s book.

It’s extremely difficult to portray the complexities of a novel in a movie. “Freedomland” demonstrates this.

By placing every single character and every single subplot in the movie, it becomes bogged down and tiresome. Every scene holds a new plot with a whole new set of characters. The result was a cast that didn’t quite mesh and two main characters who are never truly developed. If more focus was placed on one particular area, “Freedomland” would have had a stronger and mor convincing dynamic.

Comment on this story in the Features forum >>