Title:Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby By: Matthew Bright Released by: Full Moon Entertainment Released on: 1999 Rating (out of 10): 4 Date: 07/19/2001
Natasha Lyonne, Maria Celedonio, David Alan Grier, Vincent Gallo
Lesbian Lovers on the Lam
A bulimic, trailer-trash blonde with a chip on her shoulder, White Girl (Natasha Lyonne), escapes from a women's prison with a hyperactive, perpetually jumpy, cold-blooded serial killer who has a girlish grin—Cyclona (Maria Celedonio).
Together, they make like Butch and Sundance, or a lesbian Bonnie and Clyde—en route to Tijuana by car, train and foot, sniffing glue, and killing off potential rapists and little old couples as they go.
Of course, this detestable duo falls in love and learns how to cope with life along the way—well, learn as much as two ignorant killers are capable of learning on the road.
A sequel in name only to 1996's Freeway (by writer/director Matthew Bright), we follow the same modern Samuel Fuller sensibility in this adaptation of a Brothers Grimm faerie tale.
The original had Reese Witherspoon as a Little Red Riding Hood escaping her brutal family along the freeway; to be picked up by a big, bad wolf in the form of Kiefer Sutherland's nebbishy psycho killer. It was a wild ride, tackling numerous genre pics: the hood film, the serial-killer film, the girls-in-prison film, the courtroom-drama, even '70s TV shows with the freeze-frame final image. It brought to them a taste for raw sleaze, wall-to-wall entertainment, sex, violence, and a dab of Roger Corman.
Bright is less adventurous this time in his postmodern genre-hopping. He sticks to the girls-in-prison film for the first 45 minutes. Then, it becomes a traditional road movie—until the final section, which involves the wicked witch of the story, Sister Gomez (Vincent Gallo). Sister Gomez is a vicious pervert and cannibalistic Mexican transvestite nun—ho ho! This section comes out of left field and is, I suppose, inspired by nasty "sleazy Mexican" stereotypes from '50s and '60s cinema.
It also doesn't stretch the fresh angle on faerie tales too much, unlike the first film, which delighted in its retelling of Little Red Riding Hood from the opening credits on.
This time, he's taking on Hansel and Gretel. The few fun touches: the trail of cocaine the girls leave in the woods to find their way back to their safe haven, and the diabolical cooking habits of Sister Gomez (including her sweet cakes to get "zee demon" out of the girls' bodies). Freak.
Until Gallo's sequence, Bright never adequately pushes into outrageousness or the reckless abandon of being on the run. The prison sequence is punctuated by a series of moments with Lyonne puking up her food, and the struggle to get her to confront her bulimia.
Freeway II starts to feel pretty old. Also, neither of the two girls is portrayed with any reason for us to feel sympathetic toward them—unlike Reese Witherspoon's foul-mouthed, little-girl-lost innocent. These protagonists are ruthless jerks with no regard for human life. Nor did Lady Macbeth, but at least she was interesting, and her character went through some interesting changes.
Still, Freeway II moves at a good clip, and the 90 minutes of screen time are relatively quick and painless. But Matthew Bright never really pushes his pop-culture sensibilities hard enough, and Freeway II amounts to little more than a psycho trip along a familiar road.
