For years now I cannot shake the feeling that Richard Price has been "writing down" to us. I love the guy, I loved his first four books, which he calls autobiographies-- fair enough. Then he took ten years off. Life, dope, screenplays, etc. OK. Then we got Clockers and Freedomland and Samaritan. All I could think is "who is this for?" All of the books were nicely crafted things that reminded me of a band trying to come up with a classic rock hit and get into rotation. Jesus, it pains me to say this-- but it was like watching The Replacements tank when Paul Westerberg decided to grow up. Argue all you want, but that was the end of the fun. I know the late Hubert Selby, Jr was a friend of Richard's, and there's no writer I have more respect for. He NEVER crafted anything for anybody when he wrote his fiction. He took money from Hollywood to try and pay the rent and wrote god-knows-what for them, but he seemed perplexed life was this way and couldn't wait to write the stories that sprang from his head, with no thoughts of commercial potential. Man, Richard is still pants-pissin' funny in the course of writing these books, but I DON'T CARE about his love affair with policemen, his desire to craft successful, popular novels, or what his take on the Susan Smith fiasco is, at novel-length and now movie-length. And I don't think his heart is in it either. When I see one of his later books it's like standing in front of a burning building-- I wanna scream "there's a man in there! Get him out!"

Stephanie Zacharek writes of Julianne Moore:

At times, she seems to be playing an idea of a character, more than an actual person.

This isn't notable if one has read the (surprisingly) mediocre book. Movies tend to do two things to good fictional characters-- flatten them or blow them up-- and while it may or may not work, the characters are often unrecognizable.

The character of Brenda in the book is so unbelievable and poorly written that the version in a script can't help but be unplayable as nothing but an idea, a gesture towards a character. That's all there ever was in the first place. That Moore could make any kind of a run at it is just testament to her skills.

And Richard Price is, arguably, one of the worst best-selling writers in America.

The film was terrible and I'm surprised critics gave it any kind of credit. Why did the police detective (Jackson) absolutely lose it when he figured out a child was in the car when it was hijacked? He's a seasoned officer who has seen most everything. That scene was way over the top and nonsensical. He's shouting, grabbing Moore and dragging her into a private room, and then is so upset he has an asthma attack. If, like he said, 3/4 of the people who call in a missing child are responsible for that child's disappearance, why didn't he search the apartment for clues to the disappearance?

The bit about the red Suburban tailing the detective - what was that all about? It set the viewer up to think he was being followed by "bad guys." Instead, it's Edie Falco's character who wants to be involved in the search. Why didn't she just identify herself immediately and talk to the detective? That was a stupid, pointless plot device.

What was the significance of Freedomland? From the preview, it sets you up to believe that the school itself swallowed the boy supernaturally. But the school is a minor part of the movie. The search through the grounds around Freedomland was stupid. The community was mobilized and they walked within a few feet of each other through the brush, carefully poking every pile of leaves. Once they get to the school, one or two people casually wander through it barely disturbing the huge piles of garbage.

Finally, Julianne Moore seemed like she was stretching beyond her capabilities to play a poor, uneducated woman. She's a great actress, but this role wasn't for her.

I think one of the problems with this film is that every element of it could support its own movie. Unlike the novel Bonfire of the Vanities,(which takes as its center a similar racially charged crime,) Freedomland isn't sure what it is after. It spreads a blank, sprawling canvas of racial tension, politics, police procedural, mother/children connections, family connections. However, sadly, it runs out of paint very early on and it starts to spread the paint way to thin to even warrant our attention. It is like a paint by numbers kit that didn't come with enough paint, or with the right colors.

The towering titular metaphor of the state orphanage is forced on us suddenly in the middle of the film and so the power of it is completley lost on the audience. Almost every person I overheard while leaving the theatre asked some sort of variation of:

"What the hell did the hospital have to do with anything?"

It is easy to see that Samuel Jackson's character set up this trip to Freedomland, but the movie keeps his motivations for doing so to himself. We, as the audience, are not privy to a conversation Edie Falco and Samuel Jackson apparently have concerning the details of this set up. This oversight is an inexcusable departure from the narrative structure which has had us following Jackson's character every step of the way. The result is not mystery, but rather anger. The only consolation is that this move by the filmmakers completely backfires in their faces. They lose the power of the metaphor and confuse the audience so much so that even a late, valiant attempt by Falco, (in the film's only truly dramatic moment,) can't rescue this failed chapter of the film.

The characters have plenty of backstory and the actors seem to have imbued them with even more. However, the problem is that the film doesn't make WHO these people are have anything to do with WHAT THEY DO or the choices the make. (Once again, except in the case of Falco's character.)