The unique quality of "Freedomland" lies in the fact that the film consistently leaves something just out of the viewer's reach, just as Julianne Moore's character does the same in her relationship with detective Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson). The film is unnerving enough with the drama of a potentially abducted child; it serves up additional tension with it's backdrop of strained race relations at a New Jersey housing project. In that respect, the movie may in fact be more about how not only different races see each other, but how different economic classes within the same ethnic community relate to each other. It's a precarious tightrope on which the film is balanced, and is made especially heart breaking when the lost child's fate is eventually revealed.

Jackson is effective as ever as the black man in the middle, but the performance of the film has to be that of Julianne Moore. At times, the viewer must consider whether she's back on drugs, psychotic, having a mental breakdown, or just flat out lying. The mental anguish and pain etched on her face throughout the story makes her a believable character, and quite sadly reminds us that there are real people out there in the world suffering through the same type of ordeals, self inflicted or not.

"Freedomland" is not the type of film you watch for entertainment, but once involved in the story, you find yourself straining to pick up that missing link that will make the entire story fall into place. Once it does, you'll feel no better for having solved the mystery, for as in real life, one doesn't always come away with a happy ending.

I'd like to give this a higher rating. This is a first-rate cast to begin with, and every one of them delivers the goods. And I almost always know where the writer, Richard Price, is coming from, in his screenplays and his essays. (Haven't read any of his novel.) But somehow this disjointed story doesn't get pulled together. There are really two plots. Julianne Moore is a mother who claims her four-year-old son was taken away by a hooded black man. Moore is a working-class single Mom living in a mostly black project in some dumpy town in industrial New Jersey, whose projects ought to go the way of Pruitt-Igoe. Jackson, along with his partner Bill Forsythe, are cops investigating the case.

Well, Moore is hysterical half the time and seems to be overacting the part of the desperate mother. There is a general sense among the residents of the project that she killed her own child and is blaming a black man, so we get a lot of threats and speeches from African-Americans who believe they're being set up. Jackson finds himself in the middle. The climax gives us a slow-motion battle between enraged black guys and the white helmeted cops who nettle them. That's plot number one.

And they are being set up. Moore, as it turns out, returned to her apartment to find her son dead of a deliberate overdose of the cough medicine she'd been giving him to keep him quiet. With the help of a friend in the projects she buried the boy in the kind of densely wooded area where dead bodies tend to be discovered. Little by little the true story is squeezed out of her by Jackson and by a sympathetic but savvy social worker (Edie Falco). Moore winds up lashing out and screaming and is put in the slams. That's the other plot, and it's more important than the first.

Anyone expecting an action movie will be disappointed because this is not an action movie. It's hardly even a crime thriller or a police story. It's a character study, mostly of Julianne Moore's character -- and what a job she does. She seems to be wearing no makeup. And her face, which is not Hollywood glamorous to begin with, looks washed out and a little haggard. She has a broad jaw and thin lips. Her eyes are close together. And her nose, what there is of it, seems plopped on in a topological afterthought. She looks like a cartoon character who has just run face-first into a frying pan. Yet this lack of stereotypical beauty fits the part admirably. She radiates an inner intelligence. And there is a lengthy (somewhat overwritten) scene in which she must ramble on about what it means to have a child -- the rewards and the burdens. And she shows us the conflict between having a wind-up toy that will love you when you need it, and a whining crying kid who won't shut up and go to sleep. (Get out the cough syrup.) It's a long and demanding scene and she handles it with near perfection.

In another noteworthy scene, the social worker, Falco, is trying to ease the truth out of the distraught Moore. Falco is telling Moore about another case in which a father took his son away. "I told him that I didn't want him to bring the child back. I just wanted to know if the child was alive or dead. He didn't have to speak. All he had to do was nod his head and give me a straight answer. Yes or no. Was he dead? Just nod your head. Is he dead?" And we realize that Falco is no longer talking about a hypothetical kidnapper but is speaking gently but directly to Moore.

These are outstanding scenes and yet I felt the two subplots were cobbled together with staples. The black rage seemed to be there only to juice up a story which, it might otherwise have been argued, belonged on Lifetime Movie Network. And dramatic high points aside, the story does at times become sluggish. A curious but irrelevant search of an abandoned orphanage.

The movie is about parent/child relationships. Jackson has a son of his own in the same prison that Moore winds up in. The dilapidated orphanage reeks of sewage and futility. The film certainly demonstrates Moore's range as an actress and, that aside, ought to prompt all of us to wonder if people should have babies before they're prepared to care for them. Not to be perfect parents, but to be what Freud would have called "the good-enough parent."

Bloodied Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore) arrives at the emergency room claiming to be a victim of a carjacking in the black neighborhood. Police detective Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson) is assigned the case and she reveals that her son is still in the car. Brenda's brother Danny (Ron Eldard) is a cop from a neighboring town and the outside police force descends on the black town. Soon Lorenzo starts questioning Brenda's story. He recruits Karen Collucci (Edie Falco) and her volunteer group to search for the boy.

This tries to be a thriller while tackling some very sensitive racial issues. The problem is that it handles it with no subtlety. It hits the issue with a sledgehammer. There is a good crime mystery here but it gets overwhelmed. It seems like everybody is yelling and nobody is listening. It may be better to introduce Edie Falco earlier in the movie rather than halfway through. It's a frustrating film to watch.