When I saw the trailer for Freedomland, it really didn't look as appealing as it tries to come off as. The trailer seems to try to trick you into thinking a lot of action-packed riveting things are happening in it, when given two seconds to think, you wonder...well what? And upon seeing the movie last night, I realized it was just the same.
Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore run around police stations, parade around town while riotous crowds of angry blacks yell and scream at Brenda (Moore), her brother Danny (Rod Eldard) wrathfully slams people's heads down on tables, marches around with small armies of random cops, and berates his sister all for no apparent reason. This seem like an appealing movie to you? The 200 other people in the theater didn't think so either.
The movie starts out with Detective Lorenzo Council (Jackson) talking to a few people in a low-income housing district--he apparently knows them all. While there, he and his partner get a call on their radio about a woman who was attacked and car-jacked. They go to the hospital to speak to Brenda Martin whose hands are torn up and bloody, and she explains how a black man threw her out of her car as she was taking a shortcut through a bad neighborhood, and drove off with her car not knowing her 4 year old was sleeping son in the back seat.
Seems like a pretty interesting beginning to a film. And it was. The problem is, everything pretty much goes downhill from there. And with the exception of one excellent scene with Edie Falco and Julianne Moore, the rest of the film is pretty much laughable. The movie is full of feigned action and suspense, and many random things happen in the film that have no payoff.
Article comments
1 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Freedomland was the name of an "amusement" park that opened up for a short timne in the noreth-east Bronx. It closed, and the property became known as Co-op City - tall buildings in a swamp that sucked the middle class population out out the central Bronx. Tall buildings built in a swamp just sink and years ago I knew people trying desperately to get out of there.
And now you review a movie that is as much of a swamp as Freedomland was in the Bronx 40 years ago. Seems that the name is a curse.
2 - Chris Evans
Haha
Seems so.
3 - Scott Butki
Freedomland is an excellent novel. The author, Richard Price, also wrote Clockers (which is a much better adaptation).
From what I've read they made too many changes when making it into a movie that they ruined some of the best parts of the book.
Very unfortunate.
4 - Chris Evans
Yeah, essentially what's wrong with Freedomland--at least it seems so--is that it's a decent movie that was edited so horribly that everything that is left doesn't make any sense.
5 - Scott Butki
So read the book instead.
Case closed.
Next?
:)
6 - Aaron Daniels
I think the movie had very little detail about a huge number of everts. I left the theater very confused.
Thanks, I'll try the book