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.
Paquin portrays a 1970s Ohio mother of two girls who, after an abusive relationship, moves to Florida to casually take on the job of running drugs over the water. The thought that what she’s doing is stupid, dangerous to her and her kids (Liana Liberato, Ava Acres), and wrong never occurs to her, yet the tone of the film is one of an innocent helplessly caught up in sinister forces.
As the film plays out predictably, with her poor choices coming home to roost, the movie lurches to a happy ending, yet leaves us with the thought, “You do what you gotta do.” No, actually, you don’t gotta be a criminal.