Freeway (1996 Film) - Plot

Plot

Vanessa Lutz is a poor, illiterate teenage girl living in the slums of Los Angeles. After her mother, Ramona, is arrested in a prostitution sting, she runs away with a stolen car from her social worker guardian to stay with her grandmother in Stockton. Along the way, Vanessa stops to see her boyfriend and classmate Chopper Wood, a local gang member to tell him about her excursion and he gives her a gun to sell upon arriving at her destination. Minutes after Vanessa leaves Chopper, he is killed in a drive-by shooting by rival gang members. A little later, Bob Wolverton, a serial killer and rapist known as "the I-5 killer", picks her up after her car breaks down, and promises to take her to her grandmother's house.

Over the long drive, Bob manipulates Vanessa into confessing to him the details of her painfully dysfunctional life, including a prostitute mother and a sexually abusive stepfather. At one point, Vanessa shows Bob a photo she keeps in her wallet of her biological father. (The photo used is actually a picture of mass murderer Richard Speck.) That evening, Bob eventually reveals his true nature and tries to kill Vanessa when she refuses to give in to him. The tables are turned, however, as Vanessa eventually pulls out her gun and shoots him several times before escaping.

After leaving the restaurant, Vanessa is quickly arrested and questioned by two detectives, named Mike and Garnet, who write her off as a carjacker, even though she insists Bob had tried to kill her and had told her about his other murders. Bob survives, but the bullet wounds have left him severely handicapped, costing him an eye and disfiguring his face. Vanessa is put on trial, with everyone believing (at first) that Bob is the innocent victim he claims to be since he has no criminal record, while Vanessa is a veteran of juvenile homes. Vanessa goes to prison, while Bob and his socialite wife Mimi, who knows nothing of his crimes, are treated like heroes.

Scared at first, Vanessa eventually makes friends in prison, including a heroin-addicted lesbian named Rhonda and a brutal Hispanic gang leader named Mesquita. Undaunted, Vanessa plots to escape and continue her journey to visit her grandmother. Remembering what her stepfather taught her about life in prison, Vanessa constructs a crude knife from a toothbrush as a weapon. The following evening, Vanessa and Mesquita are being transferred to a new maximum security prison. En route, Mesquita and Vanessa subdue and escape from the prison guards assigned to escort them, Mesquita killing one. After their escape, Vanessa and Mesquita part ways as Mesquita goes off to be reunited with her gang, and Vanessa continues her journey to her grandmother's house.

Meanwhile, detectives Mike and Garnet reexamine the evidence, and begin to suspect that Vanessa was telling the truth about Bob being a serial killer. They then search Bob's home, where they find violent child pornography in the locked shed adjacent to the house. Confronted at last with what her husband really is, Bob's wife commits suicide. Arriving home at just that moment to find police cars outside his house, Bob panics and flees to Vanessa's grandmother's house. (In his earlier encounter with Vanessa, he had apparently obtained a photo of the grandmother, with her address written on the back.)

While posing as a prostitute, Vanessa steals a car from a prospective john, and drives to her grandmother's house, which is actually a trailer in a run-down trailer park (lacking the wicker basket that she had with her earlier in the story). Vanessa finds her grandmother dead and Bob waiting for her with a gun. After a fierce struggle, Vanessa kills Bob by strangling him to death. Detectives Mike and Garnet arrive and approach the trailer cautiously with their guns drawn when they hear the commotion inside. Vanessa eventually exits the trailer exhausted after her struggle and the detectives enter to find Bob and Vanessa's grandmother both dead. Outside Vanessa sits in a chair apparently drained and near breaking point when she looks up to ask the detective, still stunned by what they have witnessed inside the trailer, whether they have a cigarette to which they smile and Vanessa responds in kind.