Freedomland

I had read Richard Price's novel on which the film was based and was a bit disappointed with the movie. I didn't, of course, expect the movie to do better. For one, the film has completely left out the narrator-character, the journalist whose perspective often help us formulate our responses to the event. And it was interesting, her perspective. Her reservations and ridicule of the super-efficiency of the Karen's volunteer group was interesting in itself. Now, the film version is perhaps less effective to this extent. But on the whole the issue of racial profiling that automatically conditions the thinking of the white psyche and the lacerated reaction on the part of the blacks has been successfully brought out, if less powerfully than the book.