Morgan Freeman is certainly one of the most recognizable actors working today – and the work he does is remarkable. Though the man has an Oscar to his name and a number of memorable roles in his filmography, his filmography is… extensive. Freeman produces movies at roughly the same pace as, say, Samuel L. Jackson or John Travolta, often lending his significant talents to projects that other stars of his level wouldn’t even consider.
That’s not to put down the now 87-year-old Freeman. Often Freeman elevates these smaller films simply by being a part of them. But there are some movies that even the great Morgan Freeman couldn’t save. Yes, for every “Million Dollar Baby” or “Shawshank Redemption” there’s a truly shocking stinker in Freeman’s oeuvre that simply couldn’t be saved because of his personality. For instance, 2014’s “Transcendence” currently has an embarrassing 19% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while the “Has Fallen” trilogy hasn’t managed to score above 50% on the review aggregator – let’s hope the fourth “Has Fallen” film, which is said to still be in the works, fares better.
Now, allow me to take you on a dangerous trip to an even deeper level of the Freeman iceberg, where we’ll find movies so bad that, despite the iconic actor’s involvement, they still can’t push the Tomatometer past the lousy 0% mark.
Morgan Freeman’s lowest rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes
What Morgan Freeman movie could possibly be so bad that it doesn’t get a single positive review? Well, it just so happens that a couple of movies do. But don’t worry, neither movie is particularly well-known, so Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t want to malign one of Freeman’s hidden masterpieces. However, both of these movies have not caught the Tomatometer’s eye and are currently holding a 0% rating on the website.
The first film on our list is 2006’s “Contract” in which Freeman played murderer Frank Cardone. The film stars John Cusack as former police officer Ray Keane, who unwittingly becomes caught up in Frank’s dark underworld. Unfortunately, neither Freeman nor Cusack could do much for this direct-to-video effort, which failed to garner a single positive review – though it should be noted that the film only has six reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Often when there are fewer reviews for a title, you’re more likely to find a 0 or 100% rating, simply because of the way Rotten Tomatoes works. In this example, 0% means that none of the six critics who reviewed “The Contract” liked it. If more reviews had been collected, you can bet that percentage would have gone up – even if only slightly. Still, this action thriller from director Bruce Beresford didn’t really appeal to audiences. six people who gave their assessments, one of whom described “The Contract” as “a clunky jumble of clichéd themes, one-dimensional characters and mediocre tension.” Suffice it to say, Frank Corden will not go down as one of Morgan Freeman’s best roles.
Morgan Freeman’s second lowest rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes
“The Contract” wasn’t exactly Morgan Freeman’s finest moment. But there’s another movie that fared even worse. How can you be worse than nothing? Getting great reviews and still managing to keep the Tomatometer at 0%.
To accomplish this feat, Freeman had to team up with a man who knows a little bit about 0% ratings. I am, of course, writing about John Travolta, who currently has seven films with a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes – one of which starred Morgan Freeman. Yes, the one from 2019.”Poisonous Rose” This is our second Freeman failure, and in it, the Oscar winner teams up with his equally successful friend to make a movie that Diversity called “a surprisingly melancholic neo-noir ambitious”.
In George Gallo’s thriller, Travolta plays hard-drinking private detective Carson Phillips, who returns to his Texas hometown to investigate a missing person’s case. It is there that he encounters mafia don Doc, played by Freeman. Los Angeles Times Unfortunately, that was the best thing critics said about the film, which the Times described in the same review as “just … well, sad.” The other ten reviews collected for this film weren’t much better either.
Are these Morgan Freeman antics really that bad?
“The Contract” and “The Poison Rose” both ranked at the bottom with 0% ratings. Rotten TomatoesMorgan Freeman tops the movies rankings – with another overlooked stinker in the form of “Just Getting Started” and its 4% rating right behind. But it must be said that Rotten Tomatoes is far from the last word on film criticism. Besides the fact that these particular films have too few reviews to count in the first place, the site’s entire rating system is questionable at best.
The most obvious way to explain this is to say that Rotten Tomatoes would have you believe that there are only two great sci-fi films in the history of cinema, and that Alfred Hitchcock made only two great films in 1943’s “Shadow of a Doubt” and 1937’s “Young and Innocent.” But a little more in-depth evaluation reveals that RT percentages are made up of reviews that are considered either positive or negative, turning all critical nuance into a binary. Furthermore, this forces RT curators to put reviews that don’t fit this framework into barely coherent categories. Website Defines itself as either “mixed-positive” or “mixed-negative”.
So, Morgan Freeman fans, cheers up. These ratings shouldn’t be taken so seriously, especially when the more informative “Average Rating” score for both “The Contract” and “The Poison Rose” is above zero. The former got a 3.9 out of 10 rating, and the latter a 2.9 out of 10. That’s not great, but it’s not zero either. Still, I think these are two entries in his filmography that Morgan Freeman would rather forget than save, so let’s join him in that effort.
