Freedomland (2006) * *

Directed by:  Joe Roth

Starring:  Samuel L. Jackson, Julianne Moore, Edie Falco, William Forsythe, Ron Eldard, Anthony Mackie

Freedomland is a tense thriller for the first hour and then unravels with a ridiculous payoff in the second half.    What went wrong?    I think back to Marge Gunderson in Fargo who tells her deputy, "I don't agree with you 100% on your police work there, Lou."    That line could apply to a lot of why Freedomland ultimately fails.

Samuel L. Jackson's character deserves some sort of medal for remaining calm and sane despite having to endure more plot swerves than a character should have to endure.    He plays a detective named Lorenzo who is assigned a carjacking case after a woman named Brenda (Moore) enters the hospital ER with severely cut hands.     She claims she was cutting through a bad neighborhood when she was carjacked by a black man.     After Lorenzo's interrogation, she reveals her four-year-old son was asleep in the back seat, which now makes the case a kidnapping as well.

Local police decide to quarantine the projects near where the carjacking took place in hopes that the residents will give up the carjacker.    This leads to mounting tensions as residents are not permitted to leave their homes.     They sense a double standard, especially when it is pointed out that black kids have been killed in the projects before but never received this type of police attention.     With a violent showdown looming between projects residents and the police, Lorenzo is under pressure to find the carjacker and the young boy. 

So far, Freedomland works well, but then it flies off the rails.     Because Brenda generally acts like a deranged lunatic, we know there is more to the story than she is telling.     A group of local mothers, led by Edie Falco, offer their assistance to find the missing boy, despite Falco's suspicions that Brenda knows how their search will end.      Once this piece of the puzzle is solved, what happens in the projects defies credulity.     Considering the information the police discover about the crime, why do they continue to lock down the neighborhood?    Because the police act so carelessly, we can only groan when the inevitable riot happens.     Cue Marge Gunderson.

Jackson hits all of the right authentic notes as the caring Lorenzo, who has the patience of a saint when dealing with the hysterical Brenda.     Their one-on-one confession scene consists mostly of Brenda's long, meandering tale which surprisingly didn't have Lorenzo zoning out.    Lorenzo seems to exhibit more compassion to Brenda than any cop likely would given the circumstances.     And what's with Brenda's angry brother (Eldard), who is also a cop and acts so angry and bitter that surely he's hiding something....or is he?    His character is ultimately unnecessary, as is Falco's, although Falco has a convincing heart-to-heart with Brenda in a crucial scene.

Freedomland ends rather unconvincingly and things unravel just as they should start revving up.    Too many characters behave in too many unconvincing ways to allow Freedomland to grow into the strong thriller it could've been.