There has been tension between people of different races and cultures since the beginning of time. Those tensions have lead to violence on more than one occasion. Many people have formed opinions and developed hatred for an entire group of people that they don’t even know. Several movies have dealt with different racial issues. Some have helped to expose the truth about horrible situations while others have just played into the negative stereotypes. Unfortunately, I think the new movie Freedomland relied heavily on the negative preconceptions that many people have.

Late one night, Brenda Martin staggered into the Dempsy Medical Center with her hands covered in blood. Lorenzo Council, a detective on the Dempsy police force was sent to investigate what had happened to Brenda. She said she was carjacked by a black man in a deserted park between Dempsy and Gannon, the mostly white town where she lived. Lorenzo felt like she was holding something back and she finally said that her four year old son Cody was in the back of the car. Lorenzo wanted to find her car and the man responsible before anything happened to Cody. The situation was made worse by the fact that Brenda’s brother Danny was a police officer in Gannon. He and other officers poured into Dempsy, actually barricading the Armstrong housing project and refusing to let anyone leave. Lorenzo found himself stuck in the middle of the rising racial tensions while he struggled to solve the case.

I think the main focus of Freedomland was the investigation into what happened to Brenda in that park. The movie started showing Brenda walking in a daze and finally arriving at the Dempsy Medical Center. Lorenzo was trying to deal with a situation at Armstrong when he was sent to talk to Brenda. A few very short flashbacks were shown when Brenda told Lorenzo what had happened. For some reason she kept it to herself for a long time that her son was in the car when it was taken. That seemed a bit off to me and she never really told Lorenzo why she didn’t mention Cody sooner. I would have thought that she would have been telling everyone about Cody as soon as she got to the hospital. Throughout the movie, Brenda did some things that just seemed a bit off to me. Lorenzo was doing his best to find Cody with the information that Brenda had given. She continued to keep something about the night to herself, which made Lorenzo’s job that much harder. He eventually turned to Karen Collucci, a woman that ran an organization that looked for missing children, to help find Cody. By the end of the movie, there was an explanation for what exactly had happened to Cody and what Brenda had been keeping from Lorenzo. Even though there was a resolution, I still felt like a few minor things were left unanswered. I’m not even sure if I fully buy into the explanation given either. It was believable. My problem with it is that it came from a character that had been proven to be a liar, and by that time it was hard for me to believe that character anymore.

Freedomland took place in the New Jersey towns of Dempsy and Gannon. Dempsy was mainly made up of housing projects and everyone that lived there was black. Gannon was on the other side of a park from Dempsy and was a mostly white town. There had been tension between the two towns long before the incident involving Brenda and her son. Brenda lived in Gannon and worked in Dempsy at what seemed like a day care center and had friends in the area as well. She couldn’t give a very good description of the man who took her car, so the sketch really was worthless. Lorenzo had Danny go to the hospital so Brenda would have family with her, but Danny was only interested in going into Dempsy and finding the man responsible. The Gannon police moved in immedately and shut down the Anderson projects, refusing to let anyone leave until they made an arrest. That infuriated many of the residents and set up a confrontation between them and the Gannon police department. Lorenzo was caught in the middle since he was assigned to Brenda’s case. It was made to seem like the Gannon police was out to get everyone in Anderson. Danny got obsessed with arresting someone, jumped to conclusions, and even started beating up a man basically because he was black and had a record. People in Dempsy turned on Lorenzo because he was trying to find Brenda’s son and she was white. It did seem like the characters in Gannon that had any lines at all were racist and hated the people in Dempsy. I did feel like the movie fell into the trap of relying on negative stereotypes. I really didn’t like how the police in Gannon decided that every man in Dempsy was a suspect just because of skin color.

I have seen more than one movie that dealt with the kidnaping of a child. A few of them have even been based on true stories. It can be very difficult for some people, especially parents, to see movies that deal with something happening to a child. Some unpleasant possibilities were raised throughout the movie that could be very upsetting to some viewers. I would think this movie would be very difficult for the parent of a missing child to watch. There were some disturbing things in the movie which did make it hard for me to really like it. Once the Gannon police moved into Dempsy, the people there got very angry. There were small confrontations between them and the police that resulted in some violence and people being taken away in handcuffs. As the movie progressed, there was more violence. The violence wasn’t as graphic as it has been in some movies. The movie is probably too violent for some people. It was rated R, so this is not a movie for children. The word that rhymes with luck was used several times.

Lorenzo was well respected in Dempsy. The people that lived in the Anderson housing project seemed to look to him to help them in all kinds of situations. He tried to do what he could to help his friends. He did what he could to keep the conflicts between the people there and the Gannon police from not escalating out of control. Once he started investigating what happened to Brenda, he was stuck in the middle of a growing war between the two towns. He was powerless to keep that situation under control. I did think that Samuel L. Jackson did a good job with the part. I’ve seen him in many different movies over the years and I usually do enjoy his performances.

Brenda was dealing with a very stressful situation throughout the movie. Having a missing child has to be one of the most difficult things to deal with. Brenda looked like she was in a daze several times, which could have been her way of dealing with the situation. She did keep things from the police, making it harder for them to do their job. She did do a few things that seemed a bit odd to me at times. There was never any real explanation for why she did those few things. It did come out that she had used drugs in the past. The few scenes between her and Danny illustrated just how bad her relationship with her family was. She even said at one point that the only time they noticed her was when she messed up in some way. She did get hysterical a few times, which I think would be understandable in that situation. It was just hard for me to like her. It wasn’t because of her past or because she was had flaws. It was because of how she seemed so reluctant to share information with Lorenzo that could find her son. She was bewildered by all the attention she received because of her son being missing and by what was going on in Anderson. Julianne Moore gave a very good performance. The accent she used for Brenda was maybe a little exaggerated, but she kept it consistent throughout the movie. I thought she was very believable as a woman on the verge of cracking.

Danny Martin was a police officer that didn’t seem to like the people in Dempsy. Maybe he was acting like that because his nephew was missing and Brenda said he was taken in Dempsy. Danny didn’t think too much of his sister either. He was still determined to find Cody. Ron Eldard was fine in the part. Karen and some of her friends had started an organization to search for missing children several years before. The group had helped the police close several cases. Lorenzo didn’t want Karen or the group involved at first but he changed his mind. Edie Falco was very good and believable in the part. I didn’t recongize her at all. William Forsythe had a small part as Boyle, Lorenzo’s partner. Boyle wasn’t as involved in the search for Cody as Lorenzo was.

Main Cast

Ron Eldard - Danny
Edie Falco - Karen
William Forsythe - Boyle
Samuel L. Jackson - Lorenzo Council
Julianne Moore - Brenda Martin

Joe Roth - Director

Freedomland had the potential to be a good movie. I don’t think it lived up to the potential. There were too many stereotypes used throughout the movie. There were a few things that were brought up and then not fully resolved. Those things were minor, but they still bothered me. Fans of Samuel L. Jackson or Julianne Moore might like the movie. I really do feel torn about this one. I don’t think it was truly horrible, but there were enough things that bothered me about it to keep me from thinking it was really good. I would have gone with two and a half stars if that was an option. Since it isn’t, I’ll round up to three stars and a tentative recommendation, mostly for people that like Samuel L. Jackson or Julianne Moore.

Samuel L. Jackson Movie Reviews
S.W.A.T. ~ Amos & Andrew ~ Twisted ~ No Good Deed ~ The Incredibles ~ Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace ~ Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones ~ Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith ~ The Long Kiss Goodnight ~

Julianne Moore Movie Reviews
The Forgotten ~ Laws of Attraction ~



Recommended: Yes