Sundance 2016 – The Free World

I liked The Free World as two separate films.  The first half of the movie is a love mystery where we find Bo (Boyd Holbrook), a recently released convict, getting involved with Doris (Kate Moss), a married woman with an abusive husband.  How those two meet and what transpires between them is interesting to watch.  Bo was known as an extremely violent inmate while in prison, so much so that he even put a cop into a permanent coma.  We see glimpses of his rage at times, like when Detective Shin (Sung Kang) grills him on his past and on Doris, and we can assume that it will come out at some point later on in the movie.  But, we see that when with Doris, Bo is calm and we watch their relationship grow into something strong.

The second half of The Free World turns into this on-the-run Bonnie and Clyde story where Bo and Doris attempt to flee the country for reasons that I cannot reveal without ruining the movie.  This half is dark, violent, and by itself, intriguing.  This is where we see Bo and Doris’s relationship reach its peak and their love is in full bloom and we see the monster inside Bo come out.

The two halves together don’t make The Free World a very good movie.  Director Jason Lew hardly uses any transition in the story to bring these two halves into a cohesive story.  It is tonally off beat and really drags for a majority of the movie.  Major plot points aren’t tied up, nor even talked about after they happen, which had me asking a number of questions while the credits rolled.  I wish Lew would have continued with the love mystery or started off with the on-the-run movie from the get go, because I would have probably loved this movie.

The performances by Holbrook and Moss are good and the violence, when it occurs, is bloody and vicious.  But because of its plot holes, the pace, and shifts in tone and story, The Free World is only a half decent movie that could have been great.

MY RATING – 2/4

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