hyped garbage

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is an alternative modern take on the Little Red Riding Hood story. Vanessa Lutz (Reese Witherspoon) is a poor, foul-mouthed, illiterate L.A. teen living with her drug-addicted hooker mother Ramona and lascivious stepfather Larry. Ramona and Larry get arrested. Vanessa escapes social worker Mrs. Sheets to search for her maternal grandmother whom she has never met. Her boyfriend Chopper Wood has a court date and can't join her. He gives her his gun and is later shot in a drive-by. Her car breaks down and is picked up by school counselor Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland). He reveals himself to be the I-5 Killer but Vanessa is able to shot him. He survives and nobody believes her due to her checkered past and her attitude. She's in jail while the trial goes on. She orchestrates a violent escape during transport. Police detectives Breer and Wallace uncover new evidences against Bob. Bob drives away and tracks down Vanessa's grandmother. It is the classic fairy tale face-off.The Little Red Riding Hood fable has its own blood and gore. The old European tale is not a cute Disney affair and filmmaker Matthew Bright adapts it with some hard subject matter. There are moments when he does pull back. There may be some editing to get the needed rating. The dialog is hard but it could be snappier. The plot takes an extra turn into prison which may not be advisable. The flow gets somewhat disrupted by the detour and the ending is a bit rushed. I also would have liked the boyfriend Chopper Wood in grandma's trailer. This is definitely a different type of Little Red Riding Hood.

I've yet to see Tiptoes, the film from which director Matthew Bright was fired (and, sadly, his last movie to date), but I've found everything else by the film-maker to be hugely entertaining thanks to a unique off-kilter style that appeals to my sense of the bizarre. Bright's distinctive approach is very much evident in his debut Freeway, an unforgettable spin on the tale of Little Red Riding Hood: the twisted plot is extremely exploitative and suitably lurid, the characters are grossly exaggerated, the direction is lively, and even though the fairytale is known to most, I'll wager you've never seen it told quite like this.Reese Witherspoon plays white trash juvenile delinquent Vanessa Lutz, who, after her streetwalker mother (a hilariously OTT turn by Amanda Plummer) and crack-head stepfather are arrested, escapes from her social worker to go looking for her grandmother up North. En route, Vanessa experiences car trouble, but is aided by good samaritan Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland), who offers her a lift. What Vanessa doesn't realise is that Bob is the serial killer who has been slicing up hookers on the I-5 interstate, and he plans to do very bad things to her (AFTER he's killed her, of course!); unfortunately for Bob, Vanessa is more than capable of protecting herself.What follows is a darkly humorous tale full of surprises, memorable characters, extreme violence and great performances, not just from Witherspoon and Sutherland, but also from an excellent supporting cast that includes Dan Hedaya, Brooke Shields and Brittany Murphy. The film also benefits from a quirky score by Danny Elfman that suits the demented material perfectly. Any film that features the star of 24 with a messed up face and a poop bag, and the star of Legally Blonde hiding a makeshift knife up her holiest of holies is easily worth a 9/10 from me.

Only in the 1990's that you had a enormous stream of twisted, violent, dark films with awkward funny moments, and writers and directors got away with it, although some of them haven't lived up to higher expectations with the noble exception of Coen brothers. Far away from being intelligent like Coen's films "Freeway" comes to amaze us with bringing the story of Little Red Riding Hood in a different environment with many violent and funny situations.Reese Witherspoon plays the troubled Vanessa, a girl whose mother and stepfather were arrested, and she doesn't want to go to foster care or similar, deciding instead on going to her grandmother's house, the only place she can go. This Little Red Riding Hood won't bring cookies to grandma, and she's not so innocent like the old tale, here's a girl with lots of problems and lots of anger too after meeting her Big Bad Wolf, Bob a friendly psycho killer (Kiefer Sutherland) who picks her up on the road after her car broke. What comes after it's a hilarious and twisted story about two figures that don't know how to get rid of each other, in a plot that involves murders, juvenile prison for girls, a funny trial, punchlines in the wrong time to make us laugh all the time.It's not for everyone's tastes, it's certainly that not everyone will find the story funny as a comedy instead of a ridiculous way as the plot might suggest. It's full of surprises, very uncompromising and has some interesting performance from Witherspoon as the talking/smart/violent/Christian girl who manages to survive the whole ride meeting creepy characters on the way, and a nice performance from Kiefer playing the friendly guy who ends up being a killer trapped in his own evilness, after the girl shoot him several times, and this guy for some reason doesn't die but keeps living a painful life after. The scenes with both in the car, talking about her problems and he's playing the good listener was very good, and sometimes I wish that the whole movie would be focused on them doing this because it was interesting so these two change to each other the way they act, talk and all, but then we would have a dramatic feature, something that this film is not. How come one stumble upon this film? Simple! Of 5 films credited on IMDb you'll see in 4 random titles the suggestion for this film, and I gotta recognize that the promotion is a little bit over-the-top but it made me curious to watch it, and it turned out to be a great film. One year in a crusade after "Freeway" I finally watched, enjoyed, it got me laughing and surprised despite a few clichés here and there. If you can see humor in bizarre situations that in ordinary life wouldn't be funny then this film is for you! 10/10

This movie is horrible. I spent the majority of the time holding down the fast forward button on my remote.Reese W. does well despite the horrible film that this is. Keifer S. should just stay retired or go in hiding or wherever he was before this came out.Reese has to regret doing this film.Very predictable, with no plot or storyline that you're average movie buff couldn't come up with. I don't see where this has anything to do with the little red riding hood story. They forced that association onto this film.This is not worth watching at all. The weekend opening gross tells the story. Don't waste your time, or spoil your thoughts that Reese W. is fun to watch on film.