Freeway

Released 1996
Stars Kiefer Sutherland, Reese Witherspoon, Wolfgang Bodison, Dan Hedaya, Amanda Plummer, Brooke Shields
Directed by Matthew Bright
Reviewed April 16, 1998

This movie is a trip. It's a campy, 1990's version of "Little Red Riding Hood." This is no deep insight on my part, because the film tells us this from the beginning. The opening credits are shown atop animated stills of a wolf stalking luridly dressed women. The movie then recreates the story in today's world. It opens with Vanessa Lutz (Reese Witherspoon) in her remedial reading class. She's 15, illiterate, and looks like a hooker. She's very dumb, but she's smarter than we think.

After school Vanessa goes home to her mother (Amanda Plummer) and step-father (Michael T. Weiss). Home is a trashy motel, where her mother works as a prostitute, while her step-father tries to molest her after getting high. Both her mother and step-father get busted and hauled off to jail. Social Services are called to come put Vanessa in a foster home again, but Vanessa doesn't want to go. She wants to go to her grandmother's house. So she loads up a picnic basket with a few belongings and sets off for grandma's. I didn't expect the "Little Red Riding Hood" motif to be recreated so literally, and I laughed aloud as she skipped to the car with her little basket.

Later, Vanessa's car breaks down on California's Highway I-5, and she's helped by a mild-mannered guidance counselor, Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland). Did you catch his name? Yes, he's the big, bad wolf. He's the "I-5 killer" that's been preying on prostitutes. So far, I've given away nothing about the plot. This is all setup, and it takes about 10 minutes or so. I do want to be careful, though, about what happens after this.

Bob treats Vanessa to dinner as he plays the concerned, nerdy guidance counselor. The audience is not fooled, though. We know what Bob has in mind, and we're waiting for him to turn on her. He does so shortly after dinner. Up to that point, I was concerned. The acting was so poor and stiff, I thought I had been rooked into grabbing a low-budget stinker. I have so many good movies that I want to see and not much time to see them, that I don't feel I can afford to waste my time on trash. I soon learned, however, that this movie is not trash. When Bob's inner "wolf" appeared, and he turned on Vanessa, I sat straight up in my chair. He grabbed my attention, and I was interested again. Kiefer Sutherland is one of my least favorite actors, but this scene showed briefly that he does have talent.

I don't want to say anything more about the plot. This is one of those rare movies that was allowed to go anywhere it wanted to, and it kept me guessing almost to the end. It's such a fun experience when you don't know what's going to happen, and you know there are no limits, that anything could happen. Oliver Stone was one of the executive producers, and you could feel his hand in there. I could feel parts of "Natural Born Killers," and, while that movie was too avant-garde and intense for me (despite the fact I agreed with its viewpoints), I thoroughly enjoyed "Freeway" from this point on.

There are some rather interesting characters. One of my favorites was Detective Breer (Wolfgang Bodison), who somehow got stuck in his "bad cop" role at one point in his life and couldn't find his way out. No matter who he talked to, both criminals and victims, he was the bad cop. I just shook my head and laughed.

This is no mainstream film. You should like it if you appreciate camp and tongue-in-cheek humor. I can't really discuss any of the movie's messages without giving away the surprises. Let me just say that throughout the movie, we keep learning more about Vanessa, and our feelings for both her and her situation constantly change. Therein lie the messages. This movie was quite a trip, and I loved the ride.

Reviewed by Bill Alward  Home
 

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