BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Anders Olsen I want to do this briefly. The whole plot is empty and two dimensional. It's boring and cliche from start to finish.As for the acting. If Julianne Moore had not been in it, and made what looked like some kind of effort, I would have given it one star. Had I gone to a theater, I would have gone out half way through, and demanded my money back. Sam Jackson is down right awful from start to finish. Over-acting not to mention awkwardly clunky delivering his lines. While I don't think it's her fault, as it was how her part was written, she spends the movie screaming from start to finish, and you end up just wanting to throttle her.All in all. An absolutely rubbish movie.

Davis P It's very true that the actor's performances in freedomland are the only really good things. Julianne Moore gives a skilled, moving performance as a mother distraught after the abduction of her son. I loved her performance as the mentally shut down, emotionally distraught mom, Moore is so great at playing mentally unstable characters, really nails the character of Brenda. Samuel L. Jackson is pretty good as the officer handling Brenda's case, he is believable as a police officer and he and Moore has nice on screen chemistry. Usually I'm not a huge fan of Jackson just because I don't really care for the way he usually plays characters, kind of with a very smart *** attitude, but he wasn't that in this film. The script is average, it doesn't support the movie to the caliber that it should, which is why I stated that the performances are the good things in the movie. The performances make the movie a whole lot better than it would be without powerful talented performances. This movie would receive a 2 with bad acting. The writing struggles at many points, which leaves it up to the actors to save it some how. And sometimes they do. But sometimes they just can't. And that's why I'm gonna have to give Freedomland a 5 out of 10.

raedwulf-01209 The direction, script etc.. were a little lacking but not enough on their own to sink this movie outright. The rock that ultimately does it is Julianne Moore, who is so 'acting' and you feel that. At times its as if she's in a struggle to dumb down herself enough to try and BE that character but just can't get to it so what comes out is this pose. You can actually see the transition on her face and it steals away any credibility in the character instantly. I don't blame her, acting has to be a really tough gig but roles like this are what make academy award performances. Julianne just doesn't have the chops for it and the director should have axed her early.

dbdumonteil 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 ).