Freedomland has a great cast and a compelling premise. When it comes to performances, Samuel L. Jackson, Julianne Moore and Edie Falco deliver; but the movie on the whole does not. I went into this movie excited and came out disappointed.

While definitely not the same story, Freedomland is 'inspired', at least in part, by Susan Smith. In 1994, Susan, put her two young sons in her car and drowned them in a lake. Initially, she claimed she’d been carjacked by a black man who took off with her kids in tow. For the next several days, practically every black man in her South Carolina community became a suspect. Eventually, the truth came out. She killed her kids because her rich new boyfriend wasn't 'ready for a family'.

Freedomland departs from the details of the Smith case but it does an effective job of chronicling the escalating racial tensions that reach their boiling point after a woman, Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore) accuses a black man of carjacking her car with her four-year -old son Cody in the backseat. Almost immediately, the projects where the car was jacked, and Brenda had worked, are locked down and every man becomes a suspect. Caught smack dab in the middle is Detective Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson), who has been accepted as an ally by the residents of the projects but who, at the end of the day, is still a cop (and should not be trusted). Lorenzo becomes suspicious of Brenda and enlist the help of Karen Collucci (Edie Falco), a mother of a missing child who runs an organization dedicated to finding missing children. Together, they set out to find the truth.

Even supporting performers: Ron Eldard as Brenda's brother who happens to also be a detective and Anthony Mackie and Aunjanue Ellis as a couple, Billy and Felicia, who get caught up in the drama, are wonderful. They add strength to the solid work done by Jackson, Moore and Falco. If I were just rating this film on performances alone, it would get an A (that is the big wide silly grin for those of you who keep track of these kinds of things).

Freedomland, the book, is over 600 pages. I get the feeling that in his efforts to cut down the book and make it into a tight script, Richard Price, who wrote the novel and the screenplay, might have left too much out. The result is that we get a few scenes that seem out of place and conclusions that are leapt to without really showing us how those conclusions were reached.

The vibe of the opening night audience supported my claim. Many grumbled that something was missing and that Brenda's initial story never really worked. We were all disappointed.

If you are big fans of Sam Jackson (he actually has a few scenes with his real-life wife LaTanya Richardson), you should see this at a matinee. You'll like what he does here. Otherwise, Freedomland would make a good rental.