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Mr. Freedom (1968 ) More at IMDbPro »
Revealing mistakes: When Mr. Freedom returns to his headquarters to find all his henchmen dead, one man with stars painted over his eyes, who is supposed to be dead, can be seen blinking.See more »
[Mr. Freedom's theme song ]
Mr. Freedom :F-R-double-E-D, D-O-M spells Freedom! We fight for freedom, for one and for all! It's you-and-me-dom, and ten foot tall! Freedom, freedom, and oh-can-you-see-dom, we'll always beat 'em with star-spangled freedom!
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Soundtrack:
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User Reviews
0 out of 2 people found the following review useful.
Satire misfire. 4 April 2015
A curio from the late 1960s, Mr. Freedom is about a costumed super patriot who is sent to France in order to ensure that the Commies don't take it over and therefore the world. (Yes, it's an analogue to the Vietnam War.) The catch is that Mr. Freedom is more than willing to maim, rape, and murder anyone who doesn't agree with his particular brand of bringing true democracy to the masses, which makes him a bit more sociopathic than heroic. But them's the breaks, I suppose.
Mr. Freedom (John Abbey) is in the employ of some faceless secret organization headed by, of course, Dr. Freedom (Donald Pleasance). The doctor sends the mister overseas to help the resistance, as if WW II were ongoing. The idea is that if the Reds capture France, then by the domino effect the rest of Europe will fall to the Iron Curtain - which here includes China. So how does Mr. Freedom hope to accomplish this? With guns, fists, and good ol' American know-how. His French contact Marie-Madeline (Delphine Seyrig) introduces him to the ragtag crew who hopes to forestall Communism - but could there be a spy among their midst? His costume looks like a combination of NFL player and Robocop. Soon all of the freedom fighters are similarly attired, which makes the whole outfit look like rejects from American Gladiators. Mr. Freedom has no time for nuance; he punches, shoots, kicks, and kills anything that seems anti-American. Seems legit. He's surrounded by stereotypes masquerading as symbols - China is represented by a giant dragon costume, of course. The movie, like its purported protagonist, ain't subtle. Mr. Freedom is sort of like the inbred half-cousin to Captain America; all machismo, no smarts, no figurative vision, and too damn angry.
This was directed by one William Klein, whose IMDb page informs me directed quite a few documentaries - and not too many features. His fiction films were typically subversive, meant to satirize known conventions, whether they were the American stance on the war in Vietnam or the fashion industry. I'm not sure how well it was received in 1969, but Klein was so fearful about getting it shown anywhere that he opened it at the Avignon Festival. He was probably wise to do so. The movie is overbearing, crass, and pretty repulsive, even as satire. Phillipe Noiret, Yves Montand, and Simone Signoret each show up in brief roles or cameos, but I'd be willing to wager none was proud of it. Even worse, Abbey gives about as one dimensional a performance as possible; he plays Mr. Freedom as if he were the ROTC guy from Animal House, only not for laughs. Even the sexual scenes are drab. This is a colossal bomb.
The overarching trouble with Mr. Freedom the movie is that the character's schtick runs thin about five minutes in and yet intensifies as the plot progresses. It's not long before he's fighting not just Commies but the French who aren't actively fighting with the freedom fighters, and later all of the French. I'm not sure if that's a commentary on how Americans overall view the French, but there you go. And, of course, since this is during the Cold War, there's a threat of using The Bomb to solve problems. You can probably guess Mr. Freedom's stance on that topic.
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