Freestyle is a new Polish action thriller film on Netflix that is nothing different from the basic European action flicks in the streaming site’s library. This time around, the plot is about a freestyle rapper named Diego who has left behind a life of drugs and crime to focus on a career in music. Despite getting local fame and recognition, Diego still needs money to record his songs for an album and, therefore, has to face the tough choice of returning to his old life and old ties. While packed with action and a very fast pace, Freestyle can be okay as a light watch, but there is nothing worth finding or remembering here.
Spoiler Alert
Plot Summary: What is the film about?
At the very beginning of Freestyle, we are introduced to rapper and stage performer Diego, who is on a personal mission to get his songs recorded for an album. However, the young man does not have enough money to pay for the recording sessions, and his best friend and rap partner, Flour, is also of not much help. The studio owner reveals that Flour has recently stolen an expensive microphone from the place, and he adds that the cost will be paid back by Diego. The protagonist was once involved in drugs and violence in life but had gone through rehab therapy and has been away from those things ever since. He is also revealed to have had a falling out with his father, and so the man stays by himself. The only positive in Diego’s otherwise frustrated life is his girlfriend, Miki, and he desperately wants her to quit drugs. However, there is a complication in this matter as well, since Miki already has a boyfriend and is technically having an illicit affair with Diego.
A day later, Flour informs Diego that he has to go make a supply drop to some buyers from Slovakia, as the young man still works for a drug dealer in order to earn some small cash. Diego agrees to accompany his friend, and they drive over to the agreed-upon meeting spot, which is a large mansion owned by the Slovak buyer. The man, also a gangster, now tells Diego that he is interested in buying cocaine and that he would help Diego with money for his music career if he could arrange for the drugs. Although both Diego and Flour agree not to get involved in more such stuff, things soon go downhill from here. The money that Flour earned from making the drug drop was supposed to be paid to the studio owner, but the young man blew it off by buying drugs for himself. This infuriates Diego, and he realizes that he cannot really do anything in his situation without taking risks. Left alone, Diego decides to make a deal with the Slovak and arrange some cocaine sellers for him.
How does the deal with the Slovaks go wrong?
After deciding to once again return to his former life amidst drug gangs, Diego contacts some of his old friends in the gang locally known as the Brothers. The protagonist’s initial contact in the gang is a man named Baton, and it turns out that Baton is also Miki’s boyfriend. The man takes Diego to meet with the others of the gang at their car dealership, and here, the latter tells the Brothers about the new Slovak buyer he could arrange for them. Although the Brothers are initially quite cautious, they do agree to let Diego work with them again and then hand over a kilo of cocaine to him. The plan is that Diego would drive to the Slovak’s house, sell the drugs, and then return to the car dealership with the money by the evening.
Seeing this as an opportunity to make some good money for himself, Diego goes over to another old friend’s house, who is also a cocaine dealer. Here, Diego buys some more cocaine for a much lower price and intends to sell it off as the Brothers’ product at the same higher rate as the Brothers’. The extra he would earn would be his alone, and the man would then invest it into his music career. However, the plans in Freestyle hardly ever work out, and therefore, this grand money-making scheme of Diego also fails.
When Diego and Flour reach the Slovaks’ house, things initially start off well. They hand over the drugs and then ask for their money so that they can leave before anything goes wrong, but the Slovaks are immediately suspicious of them. According to the leader of the gang, getting hold of cocaine so easily can only mean one thing—that Diego and Flour are part of the police. They start to frisk Diego with a detector, and indeed, the machine beeps as if some tracking device is inside Diego’s pockets. But at that very moment, a police squad broke into the place and held everyone captive. Diego somehow manages to escape the place with some of the drugs, and he returns to the city to lie low for a while.
How does Diego’s next plan fail as well?
Since Flour is left behind at the Slovak’s house and is therefore arrested by the police, Diego contacts his best friend’s sister, Kira, who runs a bar in the city. He then also gets in touch with the drug dealer for whom Flour was working in order to contact the Slovak dealer for him. But within this time, the Brothers get to know that Diego has returned to the city, and they confront him at Kira’s bar. They are extremely angry at the man for having mixed a different stash of cocaine with theirs and are even angrier at Diego for having messed up the deal with the Slovaks.
The two stashes of cocaine are taken away from the protagonist and hidden inside the ceiling at the bar. To make matters worse, Diego is left with Baton, who reveals that he has learned that his girlfriend is cheating on him. Although Baton says that he suspects someone, there is no proof with him yet. This is clearly a sort of last chance that Baton gives to Diego, for the latter is definitely who Baton suspects. Later that night, Baton takes Diego to the house of a wealthy old man, saying that he has to rob the place in order to pay back his dues to the Brothers. Without any other option, Diego agrees.
When the young man breaks into the place and takes a woman captive, the man of the house comes out, and he is significantly older than Diego. The protagonist’s mission is to steal money from a safe inside the house, and so he orders the owner, Zibi, to clean out the safe. However, Zibi gets hold of a gun and starts shooting, making Diego run out and somehow save himself. Baton and the car also drive away from the place, and Diego has to protect himself alone. At this time, he also gets a call from Miki that Baton has found out about their affair, as the man has bugged Miki’s bag. Diego also finds a tracking device inside his wallet and realizes that it was Baton who had placed it there. It was this tracking device that beeped when the deal with the Slovaks had gone wrong, but the man still could not figure out why Baton had done this.
Diego makes another plan and gets in touch with a close friend of his, Jaga, who is evidently interested in him. Jaga belonged to a very rich family, as her father had made wealth through his sausage company and other investments. Therefore, Diego now plans on stealing the cocaine hidden at Kira’s bar and selling it to Jaga’s father, who also has ties with drug gangs. The wealthy businessman agrees, and knowing that the entire money would be his, Diego hands over the drugs and waits for the money. By now, he has also decided that he will go away with Miki using the money, but things once again get messy when the cocaine is actually found to be nothing but flour.
Enraged that someone had swapped the drugs for flour, Diego finds it hard to understand who could have done such a thing and is almost certain that it must have been Baton. He deduces that Baton must have first arranged for the police ambush at the Slovaks’ house and then swapped out the drugs, only to put Diego in a difficult situation.
Was Baton responsible for the recent difficulties in Diego’s life?
Even without the money, Diego now goes over to the music recording studio with Miki and intends to steal the hard drive that has his recorded music on it. The man does this successfully, too, with the help of his girlfriend, and they are about to flee the scene in their car when Baton arrives at the place. Instead of simply escaping, Miki runs over Baton and severely injures him. Diego takes this chance to interrogate the man, but is shocked to find out that he was not really responsible for any of the betrayals.
Baton had indeed hidden a small tracking device in Diego’s wallet, but this was only on the order of the Brothers, since they doubted that Diego could flee with their drugs. The device was only supposed to work inside the limits of the city, though, and this was how the gang found out about Diego being at Kira’s bar. However, this also meant that when he went to the Slovak’s house to deliver the cocaine, the tracker was not working since the place was far from the city, and so Baton did not really have any involvement in the police raid.
It is also now revealed that the policemen who raided the Slovak’s house were not police at all but some Polish men dressed in police uniforms. They had stolen money and drugs from the Slovak before leaving the place and had also taken Flour along with them. To understand where Flour had disappeared, since he was not arrested by the police, Diego goes over to his parents’ house. He finds out that it was Flour and Kira who arranged the whole fake police raid and then also swapped out the real cocaine for flour. Before he can have more answers, though, the place is broken into by the dangerous Zibi and his gang. Before disappearing, Flour had borrowed money from Zibi as well, and the criminal now wanted it back from his parents. It is also revealed that Zibi is actually Diego’s father, and the two had a falling out when Diego did not want to pursue life as a criminal, unlike what Zibi wanted him to do.
Do Diego and Miki die in the end?
Once Diego tracks down Flour and Kira, he goes over to their location, which is an underground casino, and steals back the money. However, on the way out of the place, their car is rammed by a van that has been following them for some time, and it is revealed that it is the Slovak who does this out of revenge. The man then takes the couple to a scrapyard to kill them. However, it is now Flour who turns up at the place and takes down the Slovak, helping Diego and Miki survive in the process. It seems like Flour is now remorseful for his earlier actions, and he wants to get back on good terms with his friend. Or it is also possible that Flour had actually wanted to help his friend by planning the fake police raid but had then lost control of the situation because of his drug and gambling addiction.
In the end, Diego kills the Slovak and is about to leave when the man’s phone rings. Seeing that it is a call from the Brothers, Diego picks it up and learns that his father, Zibi, had set fire to the car dealership, killing one of the gangsters, Jacek, in the process. The other man believes that Diego must have asked his father for help, whereas it was indeed Zibi who had acted on his own accord. During Freestyle‘s ending, it is revealed that Diego and Miki do survive, along with Flour, and they also have the money as well as the hard drive with their songs on it.
