Freeway [WS]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

In this postmodern exploitation flick loosely based on "Little Red Riding Hood," the uneducated daughter of a drug-addicted prostitute flees the foster-care system in search of her long-lost grandmother but meets up instead with a serial killer. Vanessa (Reese Witherspoon), a nearly illiterate firebug and serial shoplifter, desperately clings to normalcy even though her mother turns tricks, does drugs, and manages to ignore the fact that the girl's stepfather Michael T. Weiss has been abusing her for years. When both of her parents get arrested, Vanessa steals the car of her family-services caseworker (Conchata Ferrell) and heads up Interstate 5 in search of her paternal grandmother, who's never met her. Car problems force her to accept a ride from Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland), a youth counselor who uses charm and sympathy to get the girl to open up. Confessing the sordid details of her childhood to Bob, Vanessa is shocked when he suddenly declares that she's one of the "garbage people" and that he plans to murder her and have sex with her corpse. Bob, it turns out, is the "I-5 Murderer," who's been slaughtering young prostitutes in the Los Angeles area. Thanks to a gun borrowed from her fiance, Vanessa manages to turn the tables on Bob, shooting him repeatedly and leaving him for dead. He survives, Vanessa is arrested, and the two meet up again in court -- with her unrepentant, even though the police disbelieve her story, him flanked by his prim wife (Brooke Shields) and the righteous indignation of the American legal system. Locked up in the juvie for psychological evaluation, Vanessa gets in touch with her wild side and eventually escapes, heading off to her fateful meeting with grandma. Although Freeway was originally filmed for HBO, vigorously positive critical response eventually earned it a theatrical release. Alanna Ubach, who portrays Vanessa's nemesis/accomplice Mesquita, would go on to appear with Witherspoon in Legally Blonde. Freeway also features two Clueless alumni: Dan Hedaya, as a police detective, and Brittany Murphy, as the disfigured lesbian who befriends Vanessa in lock-up. Michael T. Weiss, who previously appeared in gay indie Jeffrey, appears in both Freeway and its sequel, Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trickbaby. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Features:
  • 16x9 widescreen
  • Audio commentary
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • English 5.1 Dolby Digital audio
  • English closed captioned
  • English and Spanish subtitles

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Reese Witherspoon - Vanessa
       Kiefer Sutherland - Bob Wolverton
       Brooke Shields - Mimi Wolverton
       Amanda Plummer - Ramona
       Wolfgang Bodison - Detective Breer
       Dan Hedaya - Detective Wallace
       Bokeem Woodbine - Chopper
       Brittany Murphy - Rhonda
       Michael T. Weiss - Larry
       Alanna Ubach - Mesquita

• Director:

  Matthew Bright

• Producer:

  Richard Rutowski, Brad Wyman, Chris Hanley

• Screenwriter:

  Matthew Bright

• Cinematographer:

  John Thomas

• Composer (Music Score):

  Danny Elfman, Tito Larriva

• Songwriter:

  Alicia Rose

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Gerry Gershman

• Songwriter:

  Miss Murgatroid

• Editor:

  Maysie Hoy

• Production Designer:

  Pam Warner

• Co-producer:

  Adam Merims, Marc Ezralow

• Executive Producer:

  Oliver Stone, Dan Halsted

• Costume Designer:

  Merrie Lawson

• Set Decorator:

  Caitlin Blue

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Ed White

• Makeup:

  Brad Boles

• First Assistant Director:

  T. Bird

• Consultant/advisor:

  Steven J Venezia

• Stunts:

  Troy M. Gilbert, Tom Harper, Jill Stokesberry, Nancy Thurston

• Casting:

  Mary Vernieu

• Makeup Special Effects:

  John Carl Buechler

• Unit Production Manager:

  Frank Hildebrand

• Costumes Supervisor:

  Nadine Haders

• ADR Supervisor:

  Mark Linden

• Music Editor:

  Bruce Greenspan

• Special Effects Coordinator:

  Vincent Montefusco

• Sound Effects Editor:

  Don Gooch

• Additional Casting:

  Annette Benson

• Re-Recording Mixer:

  Paul Ratajczak

• Second Second Assistant Director:

  Chad Rosen

• Foley Artist:

  John Post

• Casting Associate:

  Alyssa Weisberg

• Leadman:

  Beth Emerson

• Location Manager:

  Julie Hannum

• Key Grip:

  John Joseph Minardi

• Foley Artist:

  Paul Holzborn

• Second Assistant Director:

  Athena Alexander

• Key Hairstylist:

  Elisabeth Fry

• Key Make-up:

  Elisabeth Fry

• Properties Master:

  Barbara Benz

• Storyboard Artist:

  Andy Friend

• Music Editor:

  Mark Boccaccio

• Dialogue Editor:

  Dorian Cheah

• Boom Operator:

  Tim Drury

• Transportation Coordinator:

  Mitchell Bergman

• Post Production Coordinator:

  Teresa Cintron

• First Assistant Camera:

  Phil Cohen

• Dolly Grip:

  Nelson Elwell

• Gaffer:

  Ali Farboud

• Electrician:

  Jenifer Galvez

• Still Photographer:

  Nicola Goode

• Electrician:

  Phillip C. Jordan

• Additional Casting:

  Jeremy Kinser

• Production Coordinator:

  Theresa Marth

• Best Boy Electric:

  Keith Morgan

• Post Production Supervisor:

  Linda Pallin

• Second Assistant Camera:

  Christopher Patak

• Production Accountant:

  Alicia Rivera Frankl

• Location Manager:

  Jeff P. Rubinstein

• Script Supervisor:

  J.S. Shoe

• Electrician:

  Don Spiro

• Assistant Production Coordinator:

  Jennifer Wittlinger

• Still Photographer:

  Lesa-Ann Wyman

• Grip:

  Kelly Jones

• Makeup Special Effects:

  David Barrett, John Foster

• Title Design:

  Dan Perri

• Foley Recordist:

  Arman Boyles

• ADR Supervisor:

  Al Decker

• Special Effects Foreman:

  Beecher Tomlinson

• First Assistant Accountant:

  Danielle Frankl

• First Assistant Editor:

  Melissa Gearhart

• Gaffer:

  Alan M. Rowe

• Re-Recording Mixer:

  Kurt Kassulke

• Grip:

  David Grant Wright

REVIEW:

• Although it's framed as a contemporary retelling of Little Red Riding Hood -- replete with a trip to grandma's house, a villain named Wolverton, and an opening-credit montage of fairy tale drawings -- Freeway is actually a smart, trashy, and hilarious pastiche of the road movie, the women-in-prison flick, and The Jerry Springer Show. The directorial debut of Shrunken Heads and Guncrazy scribe Matthew Bright, the film piles up all manner of B-movie subject matter and then unleashes a future A-list actress on it. Budding star Reese Witherspoon displays her fierce intelligence in the film's very first scene as her uneducated but independent character struggles to read a simple sentence from the blackboard of her remedial English classroom. As the meaning of the words she's sounding out begins to dawn on Vanessa, Witherspoon's malleable pixie face registers confusion, then shock, then joy, then finally frustration as she realizes there's one more word to figure out. All of this takes about three seconds, but the actress then proceeds to enliven the next 100 or so minutes with the same mixture of nascent intelligence, stubborn pride, and sudden joy. Of course, the joys are short-lived in a film that finds Witherspoon's character diddled with by her stepfather, abandoned by her junkie whore of a mother, almost murdered and defiled by a psychopath, and thrown into a vile, corrupt juvenile detention center. The genius of Freeway is that it manages to milk such material for thrills and laughs while at the same time elevating Vanessa from trailer-trash joke to complex, fully realized heroine. Along the way, the film also slyly critiques America's woefully ineffective correctional and family services infrastructure and paints a desperate picture of the urban underclass. The balance between such serious issues and all-out entertainment, however, skews forcefully toward the latter. After an arch but relatively realistic first act, Bright steers his material into John Waters territory; only Witherspoon's utter conviction compensates for such unevenness in tone. Of course, there are also a number of fine supporting turns from performers as diverse as Conchata Ferrell, Amanda Plummer, Dan Hedaya, and Wolfgang Bodison. Kiefer Sutherland makes a typically shrewd villain, while Clueless co-star Brittany Murphy invests her over-the-top reform school girl with equal amounts of sweetness and grotesquerie. Bright's sort-of sequel, Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trickbaby, would stray way too far into trash-for-its-own-sake excess, but the original Freeway stands up as perhaps the most subversive exploitation flick of the '90s. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi