Although I'm not a big fan of movies toplining Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, "Freelancers" qualifies as an above-average, but formulaic crooked cop melodrama. Basically, director Jessy Terrero's thriller aspires to be "Training Day" multiplied by three. Robert De Niro, Forrest Whitaker, Dana Delany, Vinnie Jones, and Pedro Armendáriz Jr., co-star and provide a semblance of gravitas. Before its 96 minutes elapses, this amoral, complicated chronicle takes some sordid turns with one of the three biting the dust and "50 Cent" getting his hands dirty along the way. "50 Cent" casts himself as the son of a murdered N.Y.P.D. Detective Daniel Maldonado (Andre Royo of "Red Tails") who died in an explosion before his eyes. Talk about a traumatic experience to live down! Eventually, the fatherless Maldonado ("50 Cent") and his two chums, A.D. (Malcolm Goodwin of "Leatherheads") and Lucas (Ryan O'Nan of "Eat, Pray, Love"), wind up behind bars as adolescents but they are released.Years afterward, an official, Lydia Vecchio (Dana Delany of "Tombstone") makes it possible to the trio to enter the Police Academy. No sooner have the threesome graduated than Malo finds himself up to his ears in police corruption with Captain Joe Sarcone (Robert De Niro of "Midnight Run") collecting payoffs and scamming criminals. Things turn sour quickly for our single black hero and his one white buddy Lucas goes berserk with his new-found power as a cop. The three of them learn about life as it is when Sarcone dispatches them to deal with a tough guy named Sully (Vinnie Jones of "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels"), but he doesn't get much screen time. He informs our heroic trio about Sarcone's boss, Gabriel Baez (Pedro Armendáriz Jr. of "License to Kill"), who have been importing product into the Big Apple for 20 years. The farther that they go, the deeper our heroes find themselves in the shadow of the proverbial 8-ball. Happily, "Freelancers" doesn't wear out its welcome. Nothing in it is particularly original, but Terrero generates some suspense. He also tosses in a surprise or two. The stand-off scene is top-notch with the men in blue intervening in a showdown between gang bangers. As the chief protagonist, "50 Cent" generates little charisma as the son of the slain detective. De Niro is appropriately slimy, and Whitaker is believably belligerent. Delany has fewer than five scenes and Jones isn't give enough time to make a solid impression. Interestingly enough, "Freelancers" was lensed on location in Louisiana!

I went in with extremely high hopes, I've been a Robert De Niro fan for as long as I can remember, and I've also enjoyed a lot of Forest Whitakers work as well, but when all was said and done Freelancers just falls into the same old cop thrillers that has already been done hundreds of times.A newly graduated cop Malo meets his fathers old partner Joe Sarcone and gets taken under his wing. Soon enough things start getting out of hand as Sarcone sends Malo and his two best friends into dangerous territory and Malo decides to take matters into his own hands, going against Sarcone's orders.I'll start off with the storyline. From beginning to end the story is nothing but the same old generic corrupt cop story with the rookie turning on his leader. Filled with major plot holes such as a couple of days after Sarcone meets Malo he all of a sudden loves him like a son and Malo believes that he's been therefore him his whole life, it's either I'm missing something or this movie has a big gap missing in it. The dialogue is terrible and doesn't add any emotion to the movie at all. One of the worst things I found in Freelancers was the very predictable racist cop, but to make matters worse there just so happens to be an African American cop who is border line racist towards white people at the same time. I feel if they had to focus on the African American racist towards white people rather than the very regular racist white cop it would have made this aspect of the movie more interesting because its not very often we get to see this in a police thriller. Overall the storyline is extremely predictable and far from original.Acting was also sub par, 50 cent as Malo wasn't bad I find 50 cent to be a pretty good actor I feel there could have been a bit more character development but overall he didn't do a bad job. Forrest Whitaker as LaRue was probably the worst performance which really surprised me because usually we see Whitaker give an all out performance with everything he does, but I guess for a direct to video movie he just didn't see the need to give it his best. Robert De Niro as Sarcone wasn't what I was expecting although it wasn't bad it was far from great, he's just playing the general corrupt cop who runs the show and that's about all you can say about it. I found that De Niro and Whitaker had absolutely no chemistry on screen what so ever. SPOILERS: I found the best part of the movie was the last scene with De Niro and 50 Cent when Sarcone tells why he betrayed Malo's father and killed him and when we see if Malo is actually going to give him up to the police, I must say it was a very well done scene.Overall I was very disappointed and thought there was lots of room for improvement. But this is just my opinion.Overall score: ** out of ********** * out of *****

I watched this a month ago and i had low expectations about this movie, though it starred big actors like DeNiro and Withaker. But This movie was great, everything from acting to environment. I highly recommend people to watch this movie even if there is a lot of critics about it. See it with low expectations or try to think in a more innovating perspective. Rappers gone actors is a major deal, 50 cent came from nothing and became something. I remember watching 50 cent for the first time a decade ago, the man has changed so much and he is more mature than Barrack Obama. "Get rich or die trying", well Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson is rich...

This movie is an overall quite entertaining and mostly fast paced action thriller that though lacks of depth. The story simply features too many stereotypes and is therefor sometimes even mildly amusing even if this surely wasn't the intention of the makers of this b-movie.The film is about three crooks that get out of prison and get to work in the corrupt New York City Police Department. Soon, they get involved in the local crime scene and must learn how to survive in tough circumstances where nobody's left whom they can trust in. At the same time, the main character portrayed by a weak but not completely bad Curtis James Jackson III wants to resolve the secret of his father's assassination that he witnessed as a child.The problem with this movie is that it almost has no clear guiding line and some events happen without any logical reason whatsoever. Sometimes, the characters rapidly change their moods and appear almost schizophrenic which is very odd. Apart of a slightly stronger and even quite entertaining ending, at least three quarters of the movie go straight to nowhere or are highly predictable. Most of the actors and especially the cop roles are simply not credible at all and even happen to be quite ridiculous. Sometimes, the movie just feels like a longer 50 Cent video clip with senseless violence, gratuitous sex, a very minimalistic story line and some cameo appearances by a couple of good actors such as the strong Robert De Niro or the now deceased and surprisingly convincing actor Pedro Armendáriz Junior where one ends up asking oneself why these gifted guys are starring in such a bad movie.In the end, there isn't much interest in watching this film. Especially the story is quite random and predictable. The low budget flick features almost more shots of nocturnal New York City every ten minutes that are taken from a plain than gripping action or suspense scenes. The only reason to watch this flick are the solid appearances of Robert De Niro as well as Pedro Armendáriz Junior or if you simply are a big fan of 50 Cent. Objectively seen, his acting is of a rather average quality and lacks of emotion and quality but he surely has a quite cool image and mostly promotes himself and his music in this movie. You can grab this flick at a cheap price for a loan if you have not much else to do and want to switch your brain off for one hour and a half but apart of that there definitely isn't much in this.