Freeway (1996)

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Freeway is a 1996 American dark comedy crime film written and directed by Matthew Bright and starring Kiefer Sutherland, Reese Witherspoon and Brooke Shields. The film's plot resembles a dark take on the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood". [1]

Freeway1996poster

Plot

Little Red Riding Hood for the 1990's: After her mom and step-dad are arrested, 15-year-old juvenile delinquent Vanessa Lutz on the run from a social worker travelling to her grandmother's house she's never met, and live with her while being hounded by a charming, but sadistic, serial killer and pedophile. [2]

Controversy

Detective Breer begins to change his opinion of Vanessa after he and Wallace interview Vanessa's peers and learn of how highly she was regarded. Breer especially is suprised to learn that Vanessa's deseased boyfriend, Chopper, was black, which changes his perspective regarding the racist remarks that Vanessa made to him in her moment of anger. He returns to the crime scene and finds overlooked evidence that indicates Vanessa's story may actually be true. [2]

Discrimination and bigotry is found in the police towards her as much as she can be bigoted to others, and the un-PC dialogue having a depth when characters show layers, such as Vanessa having an African-American boyfriend Cutter (Bokeem Woodbine) who she loves dearly but slaps twice, whacks a chair and willingly using racial epilates when a black police Detective Mike Breer (Bodison) first calls her a "hooker" and a "trickbaby" during an interrogation. (The capper to the scene: when Hedaya asks Vanessa why she said those things, she snarls, “Because he didn’t apologize. And I knew it’d piss him off.” The black cop pegs Vanessa as a racist cracker until he learns about Chopper later on.) [3]

When Vanessa painfully, slowly sounds out “The cat drinks milk” in class, then triumphantly frenches her buff boyfriend Chopper (Bokeem Woodbine). Here the first instance of Matthew Bright’s subversive playfulness bubbles up: Chopper is very black, and Vanessa is very white, and this ain’t no chaste peck on the cheek. In other words, if you can’t deal with black-white tonsil hockey, you better get off this freeway at the next exit, because if that’s the kind of thing that bothers you, Bright has loads of other stuff to bother you with.[4]

Reference