Freedomland: Please – do the right thing

Which is to avoid this self-important, uninspiring look at the effect of police incompetence upon race relations.

It's a shame, as the film begins so intriguingly. It opens with a disturbed young woman, Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore), from a posh suburb in New Jersey, who stumbles into hospital with injuries to her hands. She claims that she's been carjacked while driving through a deprived, black neighbourhood, Armstrong, and eventually confesses that her young son was in the backseat. The subsequent draconian police measure implemented is to seal off the Armstrong housing project, and therefore keep the uniformly poor, African-American tenants from entering or leaving. This is despite the fact that several homicides in the Armstrong project over the past few years hadn't warranted a fraction of this attention, and the residents are not slow to point this out. The siege strategy therefore only serves to inflame the situation further. As things worsen, Detective Lorenzo Council (Jackson) finds himself caught between ‘his people', and his need to bring the perpetrators of the accidental abduction to justice.

After all of this setting-up, the film never really takes off. Instead, scenes of an unusually unwatchable Moore being hysterical and incoherent are interspersed with glimpses of escalating desperation and violence on the Armstrong estate. Although the latter sounds as though it must be gripping, the scenes with the tenants are completely undermined by their lack of individuality earlier on in the film. Only a few are given the privilege of being named or having lines, and the policemen that they argue with are two-dimensional stereotypes.

Unlike films such as Do The Right Thing, Clockers, or, to an extent, Crash, you never really get to know the characters, apart from Moore's and Jackson's. This means that when the rioting begins, with the tenants lined up toe-to-toe with the riot-geared police, the audience feels distant from the action: ‘the climactic skirmish... is well orchestrated'[i], but is, ultimately, taking place between two sets of people that we have barely been introduced to, and is just a backdrop Brenda's over-emoting.

As the film opens out from the mother's personal grief, and Jackson's suspicions about her claims, which create a ripple effect across the community, the pace of the film inexplicably slows. It becomes overburdened with plot holes and superfluous characters: ‘the story tries to build bridges between loose ends'[ii], and ends up defying common sense. For example, Brenda is seen with her keys soon after the car-jacking - so did they have time to hotwire her car? Furthermore, Brenda's brother, who makes the heartfelt plea on television and yet brutally attacks a black suspect in custody, simply disappears quietly in the second half of the film. The contrast between his private prejudices and public duties could have added another layer of meaning to the rioting. Additionally, the introduction of the somewhat shady missing children activist group, who specialise in finding missing children - only they haven't found one still alive yet. The group is headed by Edie Falco's bereaved mother, Karen Collucci, who finally, finally bullies the truth out of Brenda - but, by then, you really will be past caring.

Freedomland is based upon the 1998 bestselling novel by Richard Price[iii], whose earlier effort, Clockers, was made into a successful feature by Spike Lee in 1995. However, with Freedomland, something has evidently been lost in the move from page to screen. The strong start is ‘a disappointing glimpse at what could have been'[iv]. The film's subsequent absolute lack of character development, or illuminating insight into race relations, makes it impossible to really be concerned about anyone involved. Despite the initially interesting subject matter and the mystery surrounding Moore's character, it's just a bit, well... boring. The themes have all been done before, and in much more arresting ways.

Rather than losing 113 minutes of your life, you're best off listening to the little boy's uncle. Get into some Spike Lee instead. Go on. Please. Do The Right Thing. 

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