Freedomland (film)
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| Freedomland | |
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| Directed by | Joe Roth |
| Produced by | Scott Rudin |
| Written by | Richard Price |
| Starring | Samuel L. Jackson Julianne Moore Edie Falco Ron Eldard William Forsythe |
| Music by | James Newton Howard |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 17 February 2006 (USA) |
| Running time | 112 mins |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Freedomland is a 2006 film starring Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore. Richard Price adapted his own novel, which touches on themes of covert racism. Joe Roth directs the film.
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[edit] Plot
The movie opens with Brenda (Julianne Moore) wandering through the Projects at night. She eventually comes to a hospital, goes into the emergency room and reveals her hands, which are cut and covered in blood.
The movie cuts to Lorenzo (Samuel L. Jackson), a police officer, and his partner, who are trying to pick up a criminal on a warrant from the next town. He gets a call about seeing Brenda to take a report on her stolen car, and he heads for the hospital.
Brenda is shell-shocked, but after a few minutes, she reveals to Lorenzo that Cody, her four-year-old son, was in the back seat of her car when it was stolen. Lorenzo reacts to this with an asthma attack, and one of the hospital's doctors gives him a shot of adrenaline. It is also revealed that Brenda's brother is a police officer in the next, predominantly white, town.
The police begin to search for Brenda's son. Her brother over-reacts and calls every cop car to seal up the projects and look for clues. Tensions grow as the local media cover the story extensively. Lorenzo takes Brenda home, but he suspects that there’s something she’s not telling him. After dropping her off at her place, he starts to drive home and realizes he’s being followed. He pulls over and finds out it’s a volunteer group that helps look for missing kids. He declines their help and goes home.
The next day, he visits his incarcerated son, then checks up on Brenda, who has helped a sketch artist do a rendering of the man who took her car.
There’s still no sign of Cody, and tensions are going through the high around the projects. Lorenzo again asks Brenda what really happened to Cody and she pleads with him to believe her, that Cody is her life and she would never hurt him. She goes by the day care center where she works and the children try to cheer her up. As she’s leaving, a mother tells her to stay away from her child.
The white town’s cops show up at the projects and arrest a man. They beat him, drag him back to the precinct and hold up the drawing of the wanted man, whom he resembles. They start to question him when Lorenzo and Brenda’s brother show up. Brenda's brother goes into a rage and beats the man, and other officers have to drag them apart. Lorenzo leaves in disgust and runs into his partner outside. Realizing that the case will be turned over to Federal investigators, Lorenzo asks his partner to stall them for one more day.
That night, the police make their presence known in the projects. Tensions are even higher, and Lorenzo implores the police there to loosen their hold to let tempers cool. However, several tenants don’t, and the situation erupts into a full-scale riot. Fires are set, people beaten, cops jumped and arrests made everywhere.
Lorenzo calls in the volunteer group and suggests they search Freedomland. It’s the site of an old foundlings’ home - abandoned for years - and the only place in the area that a small child could wander or hide for some time. They also feel that taking Brenda there will get the truth out of her via the psychological impact of the place.
The searchers gather and Lorenzo learns that their leader lost her son about ten years before. As they search, she talks to Brenda. She tells her how she wishes she knew where her son was, how she knows who did it, but can’t prove it. She runs through what she would like to say to the man to get him to tell her where the body is. Gradually, she shifts the context of the sentence to asking Brenda.
Brenda cracks and tells them this is the wrong place. She leads them to a shallow grave covered with heavy rocks. Cody is buried there. Lorenzo calls in the forensic team. He also wonders how Brenda could move such heavy boulders.
Lorenzo takes her back to the police department and they talk. Brenda was having an affair with a man from the projects and would feed Cody cough syrup, which she told him it was liquid vitamins, to get him to sleep, so she could have sex with the man without interruption. One night, Cody wouldn’t go down and they had a fight. Brenda walked out to see the man - even though she knew it wasn’t for sex, it was to break it up. When she returned, she found Cody dead under the table. He’d overdosed on the cough syrup. When Brenda realized what happened, she lost it, not knowing what to do. She drove out to the woods and dug his grave with her bare hands. Then she called her (old) boyfriend and asked him to help. He carried Cody out there, buried him and put the rocks over the grave - both as a tribute and to keep animals away. Both he and Brenda are taken away.
Lorenzo visits Brenda in prison and tells her to channel her grief into something positive - helping other prisoners. Then he visits his son and breaks down into tears.
[edit] Cast
- Samuel L. Jackson as Lorenzo Council
- Julianne Moore as Brenda Martin
- Edie Falco as Karen Collucci
- Ron Eldard as Danny Martin
- William Forsythe as Boyle
- Aunjanue Ellis as Felicia
- Anthony Mackie as Billy Williams
- Latanya Richardson Jackson as Marie
[edit] Release and reaction
Originally believed to be an Oscar contender, Freedomland was set for release on December 25, 2005. However, after negative test screenings, it was moved back to a lower-profile release date of February 17, 2006. It was advertised as a thriller in the vein of Julianne Moore's previous hit The Forgotten, but this approach did not help the film's reception. Critics hated it for the most part, most citing Moore's overacting and the contrived storyline as its main flaws. The New York Times especially hated the film, calling it "an early contender for the worst film of the year." However, Edie Falco did receive some praise for her supporting role. Audiences did not respond well either. When it finally left theaters, it had only grossed around $12.6 million at the U.S. box office.
[edit] Trivia
- The story is inspired by the 1994 case of Susan Smith who maintained that a black man had stolen her car with her sons in the backseat, until mounting evidence led to her confession for their murder.
