Movie Review: 'Freeheld'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - In the movie universe, well-meaning is not the same as well-made.
As demonstrated by the civil rights drama, Freeheld, which can certainly be described as the former and just as certainly not as the latter.
However, as it happens, despite an awkwardness and obviousness that keeps this heartfelt real-life drama from soaring, it eventually wins us over and accrues emotional power with the courage of its convictions and the sheer force of its admirable intentions.
Julianne Moore stars as Laurel Hester, a gay New Jersey police officer in the male-dominated police department of Seaside Heights who, as of 2005, has never come out of the closet.
When she falls in love with a garage mechanic, Stacie Andree, played by Ellen Page (who also produced), they purchase a suburban home and set up housekeeping in Ocean County.
But when Laurel is diagnosed with stage four terminal lung cancer and begins undergoing radiation treatments while battling the inevitable side effects, they discover that Laurel, who knows she is dying, cannot assign her police pension to Stacie, despite Laurel's 23 years of service and retirement age.
The five-man board of county commissioners, called freeholders in Ocean County, refuses to extend benefits to same-sex domestic partners.
So they challenge this discriminatory partner-benefits law and demand equal rights appealing to the press with their front-page national story, and getting the help of aggressive gay rights activist Steve Goldstein, played by Steve Carell; Laurel's police partner, played by Michael Shannon; and Josh Charles as the one sympathetic commissioner.
Freeheld is based on a 2007 Oscar-winning documentary short about the same cause celebre.
The director, Peter Sollett (Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist, Raising Victor Vargas) works from a by-the-numbers, speechifying screenplay by Ron Nyswaner, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Philadelphia, who doesn't give us enough in the way of why the freeholders feel they way they do.
None of the characters really come fully alive beyond their function in the narrative.
And Sollett gets uneven work from his cast, who strain to make their dialogue conversational, especially Carell, who seems in another movie altogether.
Sometimes clumsy and artless, the film still resonates as it treats the case that led to the changing of the New Jersey law that extended domestic partner benefits to all public employees, married or not, and helped pave the way for same-sex marriage licenses.
So we'll extend benefits to 2-1/2 stars out of 4 for Freeheld, a civil rights docudrama that, despite considerable artistic failings, delivers emotionally as a call for fair treatment.
