Sometimes great performances aren't enough

Caught this last night on cable, and as nearly everyone has said, Falco, Jackson and Moore (sounds like a law firm) were fantastic. Unfortunately, the film still didn't come together cohesively, because Freedomland just isn't that well-written, let's face it.

There is a good movie in here somewhere but the film makers chose to put a different one on screen, hoping perhaps that the strength of the key performances would make up for it. The whole racial thing was especially overblown, I felt, and it really served no purpose other than to kill time before we found out what the real story was with Moore's character.

A lot of people have mentioned how unrelentingly sad the film is - I can deal with a overwhelmingly sad film if it's done properly (I'm thinking of 21 Grams, in particular), but this one is just too sloppy. And the ending, with Jackson's soulful character making the speech to Moore's character, who winds up telling him she loves him for the way he talks to her (and talks, and talks...) feels empty, because it seems like it belongs in a different movie - a more intelligent, heartfelt-all-the-way-through one.