Joe Roth directs "Freedomland", a crime drama starring Samuel L Jackson as a police detective attempting to help a woman, played by Julianne Moore, locate her kidnapped son.The film has been torn to shreds by critics and audiences, but those bored of conventional crime movies should find "Freedomland" somewhat refreshing. Roth's film goes off on odd tangents, dwells on moments that similar films typically leave out, and devotes large chunks of its running time to sequences others usually brush quickly aside. This has annoyed many people, but flawed unconventional movies are often more interesting than conventional ones done impeccably."Freedomland", for example, climaxes with a massively long monologue by Julianne Moore, introduces an interesting social worker (beautifully played by Edie Falco), proceeds in an unusually relaxed, somewhat naturalistic manner, and features a crime that is not only all internal and largely unseen, but completely misrecognised for most of the film. The film also segues into all kinds of odd, offshoot scenes, like those in which Moore (surprisingly) expresses her love for Jackson, Jackson visits an imprisoned Moore and offers her coping advice, and scenes between Jackson and his jailed son.The film features several actors from "The Wire", and opens with a somewhat cold opening, now typical of modern crime films ("The Wire", "Miami Vice" etc). Its themes of racial tension and ethnic clashes are mostly trite, and both Moore and Jackson turn in sub-par work (though Jackson is fun to watch; he does a black Popeye Doyle), but the film captures well both the sense of a large, pulsating community, in which everyone seems to know one another, and the hypocrisy of a society which fawns over missing white kids whilst the plights of African Americans remain covered up or ignored.7.9/10 – If one looks past Roth's confused, unsure direction, this is a very interesting film. See too Wim Wenders' "Land of Plenty" and David Simon's "The Wire". Simon, incidentally, would cite Richard Price (who wrote "Freedomland") as an influence.

I just sat through this film and feel very cheated. I had the task of bringing home a good thriller for my family and they gave up and went to bed 20 minutes in. I decided to watch till the end in hope that I could justify the rental money, unfortunately I lost out.Julian Moore plays a mother who loses her 4 your old son in a car hijacking and the rest of the film deals with her and Samuel L Jackson searching for him in a ghetto with race rioting going on around them. This film frustrated me. The actors didn't have a good rapport and often the story was incoherent. Julian Moore, who I'll admit is already one of my least favorite actresses,manages to look haggard and flaky but her acting is grinding and really annoying. Save yourself an hour and a half of your life and bi-pass this really really bad film

This is a curious name for what used to be a reform school were children were mistreated .The place plays a minor role in the movie anyway but it adds some mystery to the scenes where people are looking for the disappeared child.The screenplay is terribly derivative ,and only the two actors 'performance make it a passably watchable work.Particularly Julianne Moore,an extremely ambitious actress who shines when she is given decent material to work with ("the hours" "far from heaven").Her performance as a confused distraught mum is really impressive; Samuel L .Jackson's character avoids the clichés: he is not really a superhero,his son is not the brilliant kid at the university,and we are spared the usual divorce from a wife who's sick and tired of waiting for an always absent cop.The big problem of the movie is that the writers could not (or would not) properly connect the two stories (the mother ,her child and her friends is one thing,the black community is another one ,the latter serving as a very vague and thin background ).

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.