FREEDOMLAND (2006) 1 star out of 4. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Julianne Moore, Edie Falco, Ron Elard, William Forsythe, Aunjanue Ellis, Anthony Mackie, LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Clarke Peters. Screenplay by Richard Price, based on his novel. Directed by Joe Roth. Rated R.

        Whatever message Freedomland is trying to make gets buried by a disjointed and muddled script that frustrates its audience.

        Freedomland is sloppy; plot points are introduced, then left dangling; characters who are involved throughout most of the feature simply disappear; the movie goes off on tangents that lead nowhere.

        The feature starts out as a routine crime drama. Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore) wanders dazed into a hospital claiming she was carjacked. She seems to be in shock and is a bit incoherent.

        A detective, Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson) finally gets some vital information from Brenda, the most important being that her 4-year-old son was asleep in the back seat when her car was stolen by a black man.

        The fact that Brenda痴 brother is a cop only accelerates tensions between the blue-collar residents of Gannon and the nearby low-income Armstrong Houses, where it is believed the suspect lives.

        From this point things begin moving in various directions, so much so that you fail to zero in on what screenwriter Richard Price, who adapted his novel, is trying to convey.

        Freedomland tries to be all things to all people: a crime thriller, a social indictment of black-white relations, a sociological treatise on single parenthood. And because it tries to squeeze in so much, it fails to succeed as any of these.

        Price痴 intentions may have been good, but he overstuffs the script to the point that it blows up in his face.

        It doesn稚 help that Moore overacts shamelessly, grimacing, whispering, screaming. It痴 as if she could not get a mental handle on her character, so she tried to create something physical.

        Jackson, too, seems to meander around, traversing the boards from Mr. Sensitive to Mr. Bad A... . A subplot about a group that helps search for missing children goes nowhere, nor does the antagonistic relationship between Brenda and her hot-headed detective brother, portrayed by Ron Eldard.

Whatever potential Freedomland had seems to have been squandered in trying to make the film 都ocially important.把3ft69bnv Instead, we get a mish-mash of themes and ideas that fails to mesh and that leaves its audience scratching its collective head.

        Bob Bloom is the film critic and DVD reviewer at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind. He can be reached by e-mail at bbloom@journalandcourier.com or at bob@bloomink.com. Bloom's reviews also can be found at the Journal and Courier Web site: www.jconline.com
Other reviews by Bloom can be found at the Rottentomatoes Web site: www.rottentomatoes.com.