Freedomland

In adapting his novel for the screen, author Richard Price does himself no favors. His story about simmering racial tension that boils over during the police investigation of an alleged abduction of a white child by a black man from the projects is narratively choppy and erratic. It's stuffed with too many ill-defined characters and behavioral traits that appear somewhat randomly or sketchily – a problem that unfortunately assumes an extra emphasis in this film that purportedly tackles the problems of racial stereotyping and snap judgments. The problem lies not in the plotting alone. Roth's direction does nothing to bring clarity to the story and its characters, and his blocking of the film's action scenes is downright muddled and vague. A master producer and head of Revolution Studios, Roth keeps a hand in directing, but so far the results prove that Roth had best keep his day job. (Some of his recent titles include Christmas With the Kranks and America's Sweethearts.) One recent title was The Forgotten, which starred Moore as a mother in distress, a role she more or less repeats in Freedomland, albeit with a working-class, New Jersey accent. One of the few things that is clear in Freedomland is that Moore, one of the best actresses alive, needs to place a moratorium on these kinds of prepackaged roles. Despite the predictability, Moore manages to infuse this mother's anguish and hysteria with original notes, and is no doubt abetted by Jackson's fully engaged performance as the detective in charge of the investigation. The plot twists in Freedomland's story will come as little surprise to anyone who remembers the Susan Smith case, thus in order for familiarity not to breed contempt it would be necessary for the film to seize our attention with masterful storytelling and characterizations, which simply doesn't happen. Jackson's detective Lorenzo "Big Daddy" Council, who believes he keeps the lid on the festering frustration in the Armstrong Houses (the Dempsey, N.J., projects where much of the story takes place), is inherently intriguing, but too many aspects of the character are tossed in and left too undeveloped to feel satisfactory. His like-minded relationship with his white partner (Forsythe), his barely introduced relationship with his son (Mackie), his single asthma attack – all provide hints of what underpins this character without ever demonstrating much detail. Freedomland also bogs down as a police procedural while characters deliver some wonderful passages that unfortunately end up sounding more like speeches than dialogue. The film's central metaphor ultimately contributes nothing to the film's meaning – Freedomland is a long-abandoned children's home notable for its abuse of its charges that is investigated by a citizens' search and rescue group headed by a dour Falco (in her most anti-Carmela Soprano mode). This film just can't escape the feeling that it's loitering in an emergency zone.