In Stockton We Shall All Meet Our Reckoning
My friend Mark turned me on to a great movie last night - one I vaguely recalled from its very limited theatrical release in 1996, but which I'd passed by in the video store many times since: Matthew Bright's Freeway. It was made, I've learned, for HBO originally, but was good enough to get a limited run on the coasts. And how! It was one of Reese Witherspoon's first great performances and gave Kiefer Sutherland the chance to prove himself the purring bad guy for all time.
I love movies that confound my expectations - and Freeway is one of them, setting up clichés and then gleefully knocking them down, one-by-one. This starts with the cover box, which reeks of B-grade PoTa (post-Tarantino) roads-and-guns: Witherspoon is even made up to look like Juliette Lewis (for the love of God) on the back of the case. Freeway is smarter than the average post-Pulp Fiction derivatives, and careens from genre to genre, putting the girl at its center in all sorts of peril that she navigates with bitch-slapping aplomb, like Holly Hunter in a Russ Meyer flick.
The movie stops the road picture long enough for some courtroom drama and a girl's prison flick before heading back up I-5 for the big showdown in a trailer park in Stockton. Yes, Stockton. When we finally got to the girl's prison, I felt we were in the hands of someone as comfortable with the lowbrow grindhouse exploitation as he was with Tarantino's operatically delirious top-tier street slams (which are themselves more than comfortable in low company). When Witherspoon and her girl-prison nemesis become best-friends-on-the-lam, I knew this was a film that Ebert would love for all the right reasons. And sure enough, when I checked, he'd given it ***1/2 (out of ****).
I'll let other writers fill you in on the plot and comparisons to "Little Red Riding Hood." Suffice to say it was a great time. Not for the squeamish, but often really funny. I'd actually love to see this on a double-bill with The Chase, a ten-year-old (!) road flick starring Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson. The Chase is so underrated - it's a balls-out funny dead-on media satire, full of winking, Clinton-era self-awareness (self-conciousness?). Like Freeway, it also involves a kidnapping and car chase in Southern California, but the lighter and sunnier Chase stays on the road for nearly the entire picture, and unlike Freeway's more voyeuristic, languid storytelling, The Chase is full of quick editing and wooshy sound effects.
But the The Chase's trump card is of course, the incomperable, thick-necked Henry Rollins as a thick-necked police officer who's being taped for a Cops-like TV show. Priceless performance. I love Rollins anyway, but when he he goes off on how being a cop makes him feel like a star - like Sylvester Stallone, it brings a smile to anyone who's ever cackled to a worn out copy of Rollins Live at McCabe's in someone's car.
Both Freeway and The Chase are great California movies - and better yet, great California road movies. I think even the most casual Californian can testify to the integral part roads and freeways play in our lives, and how the car helps to define the very character of our California culture. Both of these movies know this to their very cores. While The Chase mostly sticks to the sunny coast, Freeway takes I-5 up through the Southland and Central Valley, and perflectly captures the sizzling, diffuse light of summertime in Bakersfield and Fresno and Stockton. Both are essential trips through California.
I love movies that confound my expectations - and Freeway is one of them, setting up clichés and then gleefully knocking them down, one-by-one. This starts with the cover box, which reeks of B-grade PoTa (post-Tarantino) roads-and-guns: Witherspoon is even made up to look like Juliette Lewis (for the love of God) on the back of the case. Freeway is smarter than the average post-Pulp Fiction derivatives, and careens from genre to genre, putting the girl at its center in all sorts of peril that she navigates with bitch-slapping aplomb, like Holly Hunter in a Russ Meyer flick.
The movie stops the road picture long enough for some courtroom drama and a girl's prison flick before heading back up I-5 for the big showdown in a trailer park in Stockton. Yes, Stockton. When we finally got to the girl's prison, I felt we were in the hands of someone as comfortable with the lowbrow grindhouse exploitation as he was with Tarantino's operatically delirious top-tier street slams (which are themselves more than comfortable in low company). When Witherspoon and her girl-prison nemesis become best-friends-on-the-lam, I knew this was a film that Ebert would love for all the right reasons. And sure enough, when I checked, he'd given it ***1/2 (out of ****).
I'll let other writers fill you in on the plot and comparisons to "Little Red Riding Hood." Suffice to say it was a great time. Not for the squeamish, but often really funny. I'd actually love to see this on a double-bill with The Chase, a ten-year-old (!) road flick starring Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson. The Chase is so underrated - it's a balls-out funny dead-on media satire, full of winking, Clinton-era self-awareness (self-conciousness?). Like Freeway, it also involves a kidnapping and car chase in Southern California, but the lighter and sunnier Chase stays on the road for nearly the entire picture, and unlike Freeway's more voyeuristic, languid storytelling, The Chase is full of quick editing and wooshy sound effects.
But the The Chase's trump card is of course, the incomperable, thick-necked Henry Rollins as a thick-necked police officer who's being taped for a Cops-like TV show. Priceless performance. I love Rollins anyway, but when he he goes off on how being a cop makes him feel like a star - like Sylvester Stallone, it brings a smile to anyone who's ever cackled to a worn out copy of Rollins Live at McCabe's in someone's car.
Both Freeway and The Chase are great California movies - and better yet, great California road movies. I think even the most casual Californian can testify to the integral part roads and freeways play in our lives, and how the car helps to define the very character of our California culture. Both of these movies know this to their very cores. While The Chase mostly sticks to the sunny coast, Freeway takes I-5 up through the Southland and Central Valley, and perflectly captures the sizzling, diffuse light of summertime in Bakersfield and Fresno and Stockton. Both are essential trips through California.
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