Critic Reviews

Free Ride offers an unsettling vision of a demimonde whose inhabitants live with the reality that there may be no tomorrow.

The script’s autobiographical roots tend to substitute for a well-constructed dramatic throughline, giving the film an open-endedness that feels more dismissive than ambivalent.

Shana Betz's too-insistent refusal to commit to the melodramatic or to the suspenseful only makes the film seem like empty dramatization.

The result, while sincere and nicely evoked, feels choppy, familiar and, despite the script's heavily stacked deck — and a few harrowing episodes — lacks sufficient momentum.

The film's generosity toward Christina's decision-making is, however true to life, dramatically unsatisfying.

It’s in these parent-free gaps that the film becomes less a vehicle for Paquin or helmer Betz (too benign to critically sketch her criminal mother), and more one for Liberato.

On the bright side, the charismatic Liberato is one to watch. And de Matteo (“The Sopranos”) brings a crucial jolt of assertive energy. Both seem to be in another, more exciting movie entirely.

The film is content to merely document certain happenings and hope you find them as interesting as it does.

It’s unspeakably depressing to see Anna Paquin playing the mom (of a teenager!), but the pointlessness and mediocrity of the Paquin-produced Free Ride is even more depressing.