Freeway: Rating: 5 stars

Little Red Riding Hood gets a gritty modern makeover.

Freeway (1996)
1996 · R · Thriller
Reviewed November 16, 2007
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The girl’s now a troubled teen (Reese Witherspoon) fleeing from Social Services and trying to get to Grandma’s trailer park by hitching a ride with the sinister Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland). Talk about your grim fairly tales. There’s enough blood and violence in this film to put the goriest werewolf movie to shame. Reese Witherspoon seems a tad too mature and squeaky-clean to play such a fucked-up character, but she gives it a good effort, and the character is awesome — she’s the kind of girl who, when threatened by a serial killer with a straight-edge razor, pulls a gun on him, cusses him out, pistol-whips him, gives him a lecture on bad manners, and then shoots him in the neck for good measure. And then gets down on her knees and asks God’s forgiveness before taking the guy’s wallet and going for a burger. Kiefer Sutherland is at his creepy, sociopathic best as Wolverton, the nice guy you just know can’t be as good as he seems. For those who take their comedy black — very, very black.