Freedomland [2006]

See Larger Image	List Price: £15.99 Our Price: £10.97 Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Philip Bosco, Julianne Moore, Edie Falco, William Forsythe Directed By: Joe Roth Average Customer Rating:


Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 Audience Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Binding: DVD EAN: 5035822126633 Format: Dubbed Label: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Region Code: 2 Release Date: 2006-09-04 Running Time: 113 Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Theatrical Release Date: 2006
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Could've been great Comment: Freedomland is the kind of complex, multifacetted story that would always prove difficult to convert from text to celluloid. While Richard Price's novel brilliantly captures the simmering racial frustrations, this, the movie version, goes in for sentimentality surrounding the disappearance of a child as the focal point. Where the novel really built the tension between black and white with the empiricist (Price's own word) whites believing their own and the black community being forced to defend, little of this is projected in the film. Whereas the book explored the dark side of human nature to jump at an opportunity to highlight a cause, the film barely skims the notion, and where in the book we're thrown into the middle of the fear and excitement of a massive race riot, the film relies on only a handful of extras to attempt to recreate streets of rage and fire. A movie about the consensus of a community needs to show the strength of such with numbers, and this film simply lacks in that department. If you're a Richard Price fan you'll be disappointed by the film, but it was almost worth watching the DVD for the interview with Richard. All in all, a highly forgettable film, there's little wonder it went straight to DVD and is extremely obscure. Too bad, the book is fantastic. Customer Rating: Summary: It's terrible Comment: Lame acting, lame script, contrived story-line. I can't believe Samuel L. agreed to act in this tripe. Juliane Moore's acting was particularly poor. During some of the "emotional" and "revealing" scenes, I found myself laughing rather than empathising. It was that bad. The film did not rise above mediocre at any point in time, even when the crucial revelation was made. The lowest point? Probably the "race riots". What an utter farce. Are we to believe that a detective would have the authority to impose, let alone sustain a "lockdown" over several days on the basis of the evidence presented in the story? I doubt it would have happened in 60s Mississippi, let alone New York in 2006! I'm not normally moved to review films. I avoid the ones most people slate and when i've viewed one that most people rate highly and I enjoy it too, I can't be bothered to repeat what everyone else says. However, I viewed this banal nonsense on the strength of a 31/2 star average review. Hopefully I've redressed the balance a bit and with so many good films to watch out there, I might have saved someone a similar waste of time. Customer Rating: Summary: Freedomland - good Saturday night entertainment Comment: On the whole a good movie. Samuel L Jackson gives a good performance (if not different from previous roles). Film deals with a number of hard topics (missing children, race riots) which for me was at a good level. Definately worth watching Customer Rating: Summary: seen worse, seen better Comment: Tough task trying to decide between 2 or 3 stars for this movie. I went for 3 as i can see myself watching it again if the situation ever arose. Clearly wasn't too terrible an ordeal. Good points: 1. Tackles racial discrimination well in an in-your-face hard hitting manner 2. Strong acting (though Julianne Moore's character can get irritating with all the crying and stuff) 3. Not a half bad plot Bad points: 1. I figured out the core of the ending about a minute into the movie so something went wrong somewhere! 2. It started to drag out towards the end. Everytime I thought it was fading out there was another unnecessary scene. So what's it about? : The movie starts with Julianne Moore walking into a hospital with blood stained hands. Samuel L Jackson (Det. Lorenzo) is the veteran cop known throughout the district who is called in to run the case. He soon finds out that she was car jacked in 'the hood' (if there's a more PC term please let me know!) The twist is her son was asleep in the backseat and her brother is a (racist?) cop. This prompts a high alert search for car, perp and child via a clamp down of the whole neighbourhood. Tensions begin to rise between cops and civilians which threatens to boil over into fully blown riots. The only people who seem to be on the side of the people and actively trying to prevent it are Det Lorenzo and his partner. More Reviews