A woman walks into the emergency room of a working class New Jersey suburban hospital like a ghost, her hands bloodied and her body a sea of pain. Police detective Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson, “Coach Carter”) listens to her story, an horrific tale of being carjacked on an undeveloped piece of land separating the predominantly African American town of Dempsy with the blue collar, mostly white, suburb of Gannon. But what starts out as a routine automobile theft becomes something far more devastating, the woman, Gannon native and Dempsy preschool worker Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore, “Far From Heaven”), revealing amidst the tears that her son was asleep in the back of the car at the time of the crime.

Very quickly things in Dempsy spiral out of control, the housing project in front of which this event supposedly occurred shutdown by both township’s police forces. Racing against time, the thought of a racial war an ever increasing possibility, Council turns to activist Karen Collucci (Edie Falco, HBO’s “The Sopranos”) for help, thinking the woman can help him crack Brenda’s silence. The detective is sure there is more going on then meets the eye, so sure he’s willing to bet his career upon it. In the end, the search for Brenda’s child takes them all to the ruins of Freedomland, a ghostly wasteland where thousands of children gave their lives for no other reason than they were poor.

There is a lot, one heck of a lot, on the mind of the new movie “Freedomland.” Race, poverty, culture, economics, family, social responsibility, faith, parental guidance, all of this and more runs through acclaimed writer Richard Price’s (“Ransom,” “The Color of Money”) script. Based upon his book of the same name, this is a tough, uncompromising motion picture that actually has the guts to be about something more than just the next big action-packed shootout. It is a ballsy social exploration looking at issues facing all of us in the here and now, the filmmakers asking tough questions with no easy answers and expecting audiences to take the time figure it all out for themselves.

As much as I admire all of the above, that still doesn’t change the fact “Freedomland” isn’t very good. It is heavy-handed and didactic, director Joe Roth (“Christmas with the Kranks”) slamming each and every point of the feature down so hard I could swear he was using a sledgehammer. This is a movie where everything is telegraphed, everything is over-processed and over-produced, and the only questions arising have nothing to do with the central mystery but instead revolve over how long a person has to sit in the theater before saying enough is enough. No cliché is left unturned by the filmmaker, no cinematic trick left uncovered, and whether he’s using James Newton Howard’s (“Batman Begins”) domineering score like a semi truck or forcing cinematographer Anastas Michos (“Mona Lisa Smile”) to throw in some misbegotten slow motion every step Roth takes is wrong.

The actors try their best to make this all work despite the director’s incompetence. Moore has her moments, digging into Brenda far more richly then the thinly constructed character deserves. While she goes over the top a few too many times (a scene with Jackson where she responds to his question as to if she killed her boy is almost laughable) for the most part the actress still manages an intriguing portrait of a woman in distress. Falco, too, is quite good, and I couldn’t help but think another, probably more interesting, movie about her group searching for lost children would hold attentions better then this.

None of the film’s problems relate to Jackson. This is a titanic performance, maybe one of the actor’s best, free of many of the ticks and quirks that have started to grow tiresome in recent portrayals. He’s every bit as good here as he was in “Changing Lanes,” “Eve’s Bayou” and his Oscar-nominated turn in “Pulp Fiction,” his flawed, complicated detective Council the type of character you could base an entire series upon. This is a fierce bit of acting on Jackson’s part, and every time I thought I could take no more of the movie he’d find some way to settle me back down within my seat convincing me to stay.

But stay to see what? The only thing “Freedomland” ends up doing is make me want to read Price’s critically acclaimed novel. There are some great themes working their way through this piece, sections recalling the writer’s excellent script for Spike Lee’s “Clockers,” Atom Egoyan’s masterpiece “Exotica” and even last year’s Oscar-nominated sensation “Crash.” But none of it is realized, none of it comes together, Roth turning long stretches into uninteresting shouting matches revolving around arguments we’ve seen far too many times before. Worse, the central mystery really isn’t a mystery at all, the final interrogation room showdown spelling it all out more fit for a Broadway stage or a Playhouse 90 set than it is for a theater screen. Heck, “Law & Order” does this sort of thing three nights a week and does it better, and when you turn on NBC and watch it there at least you only have to spend an hour to take it all in.

I don’t know. I admire what Roth, Price and company are trying to say and do, and I definitely respect the filmmakers for getting a major Hollywood studio to finance it, but the message is so muddled and forced I can’t help but want to scream. As a critic, I keep asking – begging – for more movies to be made with something to say, a point of view more intricate and interesting than the next explosion. But bad is still bad, and as much as it kills me to say so this movie is crummy with a capital “C.” In fact, the only mystery left isn’t about what happened to a missing child, but rather whether or not the failure of “Freedomland” will murder other attempts by Hollywood to make pictures of substance in the future.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)