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Detective Lorenzo Council (Samuel
Jackson) a battle-scarred, long-time policeman is assigned to handle the case of Brenda Martin, (Julianne Moore) who walks into a hospital dazed, confused and bloodied. She
reports that she has been car-jacked by a blackman when she made a wrong turn into a seedy part of a predominantly black neighborhood. Upon interrogation, Council finds out that
Brenda's four-year-old son, Cody was asleep in the back of the car and was also, purportedly, abducted by the car-jacker. The full might of the New Jersey Police Force, led by
Officer Martin (Ron Eldard) Brenda's brother descends on the low-income black community in search of the missing boy. Racial tensions rise as the blacks are angered over the
evident display of racial discrimination. Council has to do a balancing act as he tries to defuse the explosive situation and find the missing boy at the same time. The story ends
with a shocking revelation on Freedomland, an old, abandoned, dilapidated orphanage with a history of horror and abuse.
Freedomland is trying to do a CRASH, an Academy Award Winner for Best Picture last year. But while Crash is a subtle and complex study of how racial prejudice affects us in almost unconscious ways, this film is a convoluted, melodramatic, badly written and overly directed piece of work. It has as much subtlety as a bull in a China Shop. Nothing in the story and the scenes ring true. The prodigious talents of its lead stars, Jackson and Moore, not to mention Falco are wasted. Instead of soaring and setting us free with its insights of the racial issue,
Freedomland has crashed and bogged us down with its heavy-handed treatment stereotypes and complicated story.
Freedomland wears and displays its good intentions but in a heavy-handed way. Take Jackson and Moore for instance: Council (Jackson)Jackson is urbane, cool and skeptic but when he discovers that Cody is inadvertently abducted he gets crazy, goes frenzy and almost collapses into an asthma attack; and Moore, the complete actress that she is, allowing herself to be de-glamorized by playing the role of a flawed and neurotic woman, overplays her part with too much hysterics. Perhaps, the blame could be placed on the long-winding story and the over direction of Joe Roth. What is a simple case of car- jacking turns into a twisted and perplexing story that is too difficult for viewers to unravel.
(Date Reviewed: 18 August 2006)
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