- Cast & crew
User reviews
Great period feeling
- blueknowser
- Feb 7, 2014
Fairly Absorbing But I Can't Buy Into the Rationalizations
- Mar 14, 2014
Pretty cookie cutter and predictable but it is a true story so that fact alone makes it more interesting.
- cosmo_tiger
- Feb 13, 2014
1970s mother slips into an ever increasing storm of drug influenced business
- May 16, 2015
A little confusing at times
- May 6, 2014
A movie of two halves.
- bazookamouth-221-898097
- Aug 29, 2018
Not great but not terrible.
- jms_mckelvey
- Nov 3, 2021
MJ better lead character
- SnoopyStyle
- Apr 2, 2015
- Jan 29, 2014
True 1977 Florida
- Mar 16, 2019
Gas, grass or ass nobody rides for free
- Nov 21, 2023
complete zero
- sandcrab277
- Oct 21, 2021
Free Ride Review - Live from FL
- cherylcoveduck
- Jan 12, 2014
A RANDOM GENE
- nogodnomasters
- Oct 13, 2018
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Free ride: film review.
Shana Betz's debut is a childhood memoir starring Anna Paquin as the director's mother.
By THR Staff
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THE HAMPTONS, NEW YORK — A loving portrait of a mother many would say deserves a much more critical eye, Shana Betz’ s Free Ride casts Anna Paquin as a roman-a-clef version of her own mother, a single woman who works as a drug smuggler in late-70s Florida while raising two daughters. Paquin’s name will draw attention to the picture, whose parenting themes go only so far in making a familiar tale of the high life’s perils feel novel.
Betz’s debut feature presents her younger self (here named Shell, and played by Ava Acres ) as a bystander who witnesses her mother’s bad life choices but isn’t old enough, as teen sister MJ ( Liana Liberato ) is, to have her coming-of-age shaped by the conflict they engender. We meet the family in Ohio, where Paquin’s Christina, being regularly abused by her partner, picks the girls up from school one day and cheerfully declares they’re driving straight to Florida.
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There, a friend ( Drea de Matteo ‘s Sandy) has promised to set Christina up in a job doing light housekeeping at a mansion owned by her boss, “The Captain” ( Lloyd Owen ). The job’s just a tryout for more illicit work: While it’s not clear how Christina demonstrates her aptitude while dusting the mantel, she’s soon being asked to ride along on boat charters that pick up bales of pot and bring them to the U.S..
Though she’s told that her new job’s central rule is not to have relationships within the organization, the gig is largely social: Smuggling trips are disguised as pleasure outings, and the party continues back ashore in bars where Christina and Sandy dance provocatively for their male coworkers. The captain moves the family out of their cheap motel and into a spacious farmhouse, complete with a horse for MJ. The barn doubles as a drug warehouse, and Mom makes her go-along values clear to a teen whose face betrays moral qualms, or at least fear of getting in trouble: “Wanna keep the horse? Then be cool.”
The plot follows a familiar arc, with montages of hedonistic good times (including some druggy, gropey parties that are witnessed by the kids) leading to menacing turns of events and inevitable encounters with the Feds. Betz and her cast have a firm grip on the domestic side of things, with MJ’s confused responses threatening to break the family up before the law can intervene, but the film’s generosity toward Christina’s decision-making is, however true to life, dramatically unsatisfying. A coda offers the director’s actual mother, in voiceover, saying “you do what you can to take care of your family,” a sentiment that may earn sneers from single mothers in the audience who’ve found less hazardous ways to make ends meet.
Production Company: Casm Films
Cast: Anna Paquin, Drea de Matteo, Cam Gigandet, Liana Liberato, Lloyd Owen, Jeff Hehpner, Yvette Yates, Ava Acres
Director-Screenwriter: Shana Betz
Producers: Susan Dynner, Cerise Hallam Larkin, Anna Paquin
Executive producers: Dan Keston, Mark Larkin, Stephen Moyer, Wendy Williams
Director of photography: Quyen Tran
Production designer:
Music: Jeff Russo
Costume designer: Alexis Scott
Editor: Danny Daneau
Sales: Cargo Entertainment
No rating, 85 minutes
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