Starring: Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore

Freedomland is a spiritually and emotionally intense movie. Richard Price, the author of the novel on which the movie was based, tells an amazing story with an underlying current of grace and redemption that flows through racial tension, oppression of the poor, and just the general depravity of our state.

Jackson and Moore both have excellent performances. Moore plays the character of a single mom who is poor, caring, very near acting strung out, and suspicious of mental problems. Disturbingly real. Jackson gives one of the best performances I have ever seen. However, he is one of my favorite actors so I am somewhat biased. He always manages to play the bad-A no matter what his character’s main role is. And in this story he is the incarnational hero of the masses and the villian. The beauty comes in his blending the ‘bad-A-ness’ and Christlikeness.

I do not want to go too far into the movie for risk of spoiling it, but I must say it is a ‘must-see’. When you see the box at the movie store don’t be fooled. It looks like a suspense thriller, which is sadly what Larry King categorized it as, but it is much more. Sadly, there is no real secret about what the ending is, you will probably be able to guess it, but that is not the point of the movie. It is not a ‘wait and see the twist at the end’ flick, the meaning is in getting there.

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