Freedomland

Freedomland wants to be many things—too many things | Andrew Coffin

Freedomland (rated R for language and some violent content) is a difficult movie, in ways both good and, more often than not, bad: difficult to categorize, difficult to like, difficult to watch—yet also difficult to dismiss quickly. (Freedomland is also difficult to listen to—the script features a near unending string of heavy profanities.)

The screenplay, an adaptation by Richard Price of his own novel, is loosely based on the 1994 Susan Smith case in South Carolina. Like Ms. Smith, Julianne Moore plays a single mother who makes an incendiary claim that both activates and divides her community. As Brenda Martin, Ms. Moore wanders into a hospital emergency room (in fictional Dempsy, N.J.) one night in a daze, with bloody cuts on her hands. Brenda claims to have just survived a carjacking by a black man who ripped her from her vehicle and sped away.