This movie, with its superb cast, starts out as a lighthearted comedy. All of a sudden, it takes a hard left turn - leaving the viewer wondering, "What happened? Is this the same movie I was watching a minute ago?" Brando is absolutely charming and hilarious in this dark comedy and the writing is first-rate. The cinematography of the woods and country is breathtaking and you really get a sense of this "small town" from the script and acting. Sheen and Church are fabulous in their parts although Sheen sometimes speaks a little fast in some of the comic punchlines, so seeing it more than once would be of benefit. The jokes are terrible, and it's all in poor taste. The other actors {Sheen, Sorvino, and Sutherland}are O.K. in their roles. It's Brando that you can't take your eyes off of. He only made one more film after this " The Score" and that was more of a cameo. This was his last starring role in a movie and it is worth watching.

Overall rating: 6 out of 10.

If you can handle a world about half a bubble off plumb, there's a lot of fun to be had in "Free Money". It's quite obvious that all of these characters would vanish in a puff of smoke in what we call the "real world", but inside their own rules of logic and social constraints it all makes perfect and hilarious sense.

Brando's warden personifies what Joseph Heller once called "a gigantic belch of a man", and Hayden Church and Sheen are perfect as man's men dragged either unconscious or screaming into their twin high school bride's playhouse version of married life.

Donald Sutherland has a nice turn as a psychotic judge, and Mira Sorvino turns in a fine performance as a kind of bridge between "our world" and the asylum run by lunatics that the rest of the characters live in.

It's quite possible that we could have lived without some of the brutality (cattle prods, gladiator fights in the prison) but then again, what the hell. It's a 90's film.

--bt

Everyone in this movie, Marlon Brando, Donald Sutherland, Charles Sheen, Thomas Hayden Church, Mira Sorvino, seem to simply be going through the motions, yet occasionally, bright moments of very dark comedy arise from the murky script. Speaking of the script, it just never gives the feeling of being fully developed, the actors appear to be simply freewheeling as they go along. Nevertheless, the film is watchable, and there is a chance that repeat viewings may actually improve the experience. A curiosity at best for Brando's over the top performance, a bad film at worst for the uneven script, "Free Money" might have just enough weirdness to survive. - MERK