FREEWAY (66) (second viewing: 61)

Directed by: Matthew Bright

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Kiefer Sutherland, Brooke Shields

The Pitch: When her lowlife parents are arrested, a teenage girl hits the freeway in search of her long-lost grandmother.

Theo Sez: A white-trash version of Little Red Riding Hood that's equal parts powerful, sick, hilarious, profoundly creepy and - in its later stages - just plain silly. For one thing the fairytale angle becomes a gimmick after a while, not really reflected in the plot : like the raunchy Crumb-inspired opening credits it's a gag, a mood-setter, a starting-point for a scattershot but surprisingly sharp satire of - what, exactly? A culture of counsellors, parole officers and saccharine TV shows ("I think I've found a couple of real-life heroes here") ; a System that brands a whole underclass as criminals, never giving them a chance, while ignoring the putrid evil behind repressed "respectability" ; and, not least, the violent mindlessness at the heart of it all, the fact that everyone in the world's most advanced country is driven solely by irrational desire - which is awful, but not half as awful as their attempts to paint over it and pretend it doesn't exist. At least the heroine is honest - irrepressibly so - about her likes and dislikes, if only because she's too vapid to go beyond emotional gratification. The film goes off the rails a little when it puts her in control (especially towards the end, when she turns into a kind of avenging angel), but is at its best when it surrounds her Valley Girl exuberance with the darkness of the world. The long scene in the car between her and the serial killer (read Big Bad Wolf) has a giggly tension, a sense of the film-makers rubbing their hands in gleeful anticipation of something very nasty, that's worthy of that other nightmarish ride Jeffrey takes with Frank Booth and his cohorts in BLUE VELVET. [Second viewing, August 2013: First half still terrific - though the long scene in the car now seems quite theatrical, more Neil LaBute (with the power dynamics constantly shifting) than David Lynch - but it sags once the cops arrive and becomes overly talky, then the prison scenes feel like an afterthought. Also seemed like the film was too much in love with Reese Witherspoon, but I guess that's because she's now 'Reese Witherspoon'.]