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©1999-2000
DigsMagazine.com.
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flick pick
| Freeway
1996
Directed + written by: John
Waters
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Kiefer Sutherland
Language: English
Look for it at the video store under:
drama
Watch
it when you’re in the mood for
something: darkly
comic, disturbing,
hip |
The verdict:
1/2/ 5 the rating
system explained
|
Plot synopsis
In this twisted, contemporary
trailer-park version of the little Red Riding Hood fairy tale,
fifteen-year-old Vanessa Lutz heads for the road after her horrible
hooker mom and child-molesting, crackhead stepfather are both dragged
away by the cops one afternoon. Vanessa’s decided that this time,
there’s no way she’s going to let child services put her into some
foster home, and so off she goes in search of her grandmother, whom she’s
never met before. Unfortunately, her car breaks down just as she gets on
the freeway. She’s picked up by a quiet, seemingly kind and
respectable youth counselor named Bob Wolverton, who slowly coaxes
Vanessa to open up to him. But as the journey continues, Vanessa begins
to suspect that her newfound friend is actually the infamous I-5 serial
killer, and that she’s just become his next target.
Review There
are no real people in Freeway, only stereotypes of people, which
is just fine, since Freeway announces itself from the very
opening – a creepy, lurid cartoon credit sequence with a sexy red
riding hood and leering big bad wolf -- as a surreal and gritty fable,
an extended metaphor of real life rather than a slice of life itself.
What’s interesting about this version of the tale is that our Red
Riding Hood isn’t some naïve little girl that screams and flees in
the fact of danger, but the amazing Reese Witherspoon, whose
pre-possessed Vanessa is the perfect contemporary heroine, breezily
charming, common-sense smart and unwilling to take crap from anyone, no
matter how hard they try to make her feel like trash. And in this story,
the big bad wolf she battles isn’t Bob, the serial killer (perfectly
cast in the form of Kiefer Sutherland), so much as what Bob represents
– a condescending upper-middle-class yuppie society that likes to
affirm its perceived superiority by reaching down to help out those less
"fortunate," even while it pretends that it’s not fascinated
by the darkness and violence that "nice people" aren’t
supposed to know about. The social commentary and satire, brilliantly
brought out during the portion of the film that takes place on the
freeway, does get a little muddled as plot matters start taking
over, but for the most part, this is one disturbingly funny film, full of
unsettling twists and turns, an inventive, entertaining road trip that’ll make
you think.
—
reviewed by
Yee-Fan Sun
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