If you're into despicable trash that is completely without redeeming value, "Freeway" is for you. But if you like your trash laced with a touch of humanity somewhere along the way, or with something — anything — that even remotely approaches subtlety, look elsewhere.
Young Reese Witherspoon, whom you may remember from the kinder, gentler "The Man in the Moon," has taken a darker career turn this year, first with "Fear" and now the jet-black "Freeway."
Believe it or not, "Freeway" takes its basic premise from a fairy tale — "Little Red Riding Hood." Right down to the wolf . . . er, the villain, hiding in a bed with the covers pulled up, pretending to be Grandma.
Witherspoon plays Vanessa, a troubled, illiterate Southern California teen whose mother (Aman-da Plummer) is a drug-addicted prostitute and whose stepfather (Michael T. Weiss) is a drug-addicted child-abuser. Early in the film, her folks are arrested for the umpteenth time. But Vanessa just can't face foster care again, so she hits the road — to find the grandmother she's never met.
When she has car trouble, button-down yuppie Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland) picks her up on the freeway. During the drive, he explains that he is a psychologist who works with troubled teens, and he encourages Vanessa to talk — in graphic detail — about her troubles, especially being sexually molested by her stepfather.
Eventually, Vanessa realizes that Big Bad Bob Wolverton is the notorious "I-5 killer." But when she becomes aggressive and decides to take him out, her efforts backfire.
First-time writer-director Matthew Bright (screenwriter of "Gun Crazy") leaves nothing to the imagination here, throwing in every crime genre you can think of — from courtroom drama to women-in-prison exploitation. And though he obviously means to be satirical, the result is sophomoric instead of funny, with such lingering sight gags as a bloody suicide and a dead elderly woman whose nude body is tied up.
Witherspoon snarls her role and Sutherland's character seems recycled from several he's played before. Brooke Shields, as Bob's wife, is her nondescript self, and Amanda Plummer is even weirder than usual.
More surprising than this seasoned cast, however, is the participation of Oliver Stone as an executive producer and Danny Elfman doing the music.
This is the kind of thing that gives "independent" filmmaking a bad name.
"Freeway" is rated R for considerable violence, gore, profanity, vulgarity, drug abuse and brief partial nudity.