La Couleur du crime

I have always been a fan of Samuel L. Jackson (Shaft, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Pulp Fiction), and do not miss a chance to see his films.

Yes, there are some major errors in this film. How come local cops are handling a kidnapping? Why didn't they look for the car? Hello, fingerprints? However, those can be ignored to focus on what this film really is. Like Crash, it is a study of racist cops and how they treat minorities differently that whites. It doesn't matter that Jackson is a black cop. he is not in control of the power. It is also a story of how cops start race riots. There have been at least 15 reported incidents in one year alone (1967) of cops starting race riots.

The film also stars Julianne Moore (The Hours, Boogie Nights) and Edie Falco (The Sopranos).

This movie was a real disappointment to me. All the elements for a fine picture were here. Good story, good actors. Sadly, the picture was not put together well. First blame should go to the director who was not able to restrict himself to the story lines he would be able to tell effectively. Next to blame is also the director who edited the film with superfluous characters and dead end plot lines. Several very good acting performances were squandered in this mishmash. Julliene Moore and Samuel L. were great (As always). Ron Eldard is a favorite of mine. He never gets the romantic lead, but provides great dramatic wallop. Unfortunately his character had nothing to do with the story. Typically, the scene where he overhears the confession of Billy is meaningless, nothing comes of it and his character disappears afterward. I'm not sure this was even a good try. Save your money.

Julianne Moore is looking for a child again, but this time it's real time, hardscrabble New Jersey projects rather than the mind of a perplexing mom (Forgotten, 2004). Moore plays Brenda Martin, who claims to have lost her son to a carjacker who absconded with her son sleeping in the back seat? Veteran detective Lorenzo Council is indeed the counseling type whose patience with the ranting Martin wears thin as he suspects lies among her details of the abduction.

Director Joe Roth seems to be more interested in the racial combustion inherent in the situation. In fact, he goes to lengths to show white police confronting black protesters, who are rightfully furious at the support for the disappearance of one white child when many more black missing children barely cause a ripple. Roth doesn't let it all go too deeply into contemporary racial politics while by comparison he gives ample time for Council to ruminate on his responsibility for his son's incarceration for armed robbery. Even the conflict between Martin's cop brother's desire for revenge and Council's attempts to keep his blue-collar burb of Gannon out of the project is underdeveloped, apparently left among the editing ruins.

A nice touch is the presence of a volunteer group looking for missing children, headed by Edie Falco's Karen Collucci, who has a missing child for 10 years. The group offers a sane oasis amid the fire of the social tensions, and Collucci offers advice and insight far ahead of any smart detective's. Falco upstages Jackson with a gritty sincerity and cool that could win her mayor of Manhattan if she so wished.

Freedomland turns on social tension but never gives it a chance to flourish. The issues are lost like the child among too much Martin moaning

Samuel L. Jackson plays the role as Lorenzo Council a detective in charge of a bad housing project and one night the racial tensions were ready to explode. A young lady, Julianne Moore, (Brenda Martin) approaches Lorenzo and is in a frantic condition, saying that someone stole her young boy of 4 years. There is immediate concern for this child and this sparks off problems in the project, because many Black children do not get this kind of attention. Day in and day out the search continues in many parks and then their attention is focused on an abandoned orphanage in a place called Freedomland. Lorenzo begins to get upset with all the trouble this situation is causing among the people and harm can come to all these people. You will never be able to guess the ending and if you like Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore, don't miss this film, they both were great.

I think Joe Roth was aiming for something deeper with 'Freedomland'. It's not necessarily a bad movie, but it isn't really a good one either. From an acting stand-point, it's great with solid performances from Samuel L. Jackson (Jackie Brown) as a determined police detective and Julianne Moore (The Forgotten) as a whacked-out dead-beat mom who's son has been kidnapped. Edie Falco is also pretty good with a role that's anything but Mrs. Soprano. The writing or dialogue, however, is absolutely terrible. I think 'Freedomland' actually wouldn't be a half-bad movie if the screenwriter put as much work into the character's conversations as he did the creativity of the racial epithets spewed through-out the film. 'Freedomland' annoyed me in a sense that the movie trailers made it out to be something it's not -- a taut, mystery/thriller, when in reality it's a film about racial and economical tensions. 'Freedomland' is pretentious in that it thinks it's an Oscar-caliber film when in reality it's a slightly above-average suspense film filled to the brim with tired clichés. 'Freedomland' is enjoyable if you can see through it's smug undeserved sense of brilliance. Grade: C .(screened at AMC Deer Valley 30, Phoenix, Arizona, 2/20/05)