This story about a teacher challenged in a school full of dangerous and bored delinquents is set in Los Angeles, which is fast becoming for urban misery what New York was twenty years ago. See L.A. and die. Except that in this movie's panoramic views, you can't quite see the city because it's encased in a smog that approximates the true color of nitrogen dioxide. If L.A. were a duck, it would be duck a l'orange.
I didn't expect much from this sort of tale. It's been done many times before. The teacher who is devoted to his job, the sexy colleague, the rude and foul-mouthed students, with one or two good ones sprinkled among them. The constant challenges, the humiliations, the keyed car, the gangs, the girl with the crush, the embittered colleagues who see their charges as beyond salvage. Watching all this familiar stuff play out on the screen is actually reassuring, comforting. It's like going to mass as a child, knowing exactly what rituals to expect. Here come the censer.
I suppose the original, "Blackboard Jungle," back in the 50s, provided the framework that has now turned all but inescapable. High school movies that don't have the threat of violence are kind of dull, "Up The Down Staircase." The central problem for most of these school movies about deprived and depraved students is, "How can I reach them?" This one is different, though, and it kept me engaged throughout because the question here is, "CAN I reach them?" The answer is yes, but not without a price. Jackson's victory is Pyrrhic. It wasn't worth the price.
The direction is perfectly ordinary and without distinction. The script at time stumbles all over the place, like one of those Chicano kids on tequila. At the climax, it drops dead with a speech.
Jackson is a wounded saint, having been stabbed in the back in a Brooklyn school before moving to L.A. He never loses his temper, no matter whether provoked by some teen-aged moron, betrayed by his principal, or accused of murder by the blond colleague who has previously groveled at his feet and practically denuded herself in his presence.
The blond, Kelly Rowan, is almost perfect in the part, though it's overwritten like all the others. She's not quite Hollywood pretty and she's at the age of near desperation. There have been a couple of truly fine black actors since Sidney Poitier and Samuel L. Jackson is among them. He's a magnetic presence. And his range as an actor is expansive. He can be a thoroughly believable savvy street gangsta, as in "Jackie Brown," or a straight teacher with glasses, as he is here. Morgan Freeman is able to do the same thing, but his age now restricts the variety of his roles. He can't be the perspicacious pimp who kicks a client in the balls anymore, as he did in "Street Smart." Now he's got to be Jung's "wise old man." I won't give away the ending because (1) it's silly and (2) it's unexpected.
I didn't expect much from this sort of tale. It's been done many times before. The teacher who is devoted to his job, the sexy colleague, the rude and foul-mouthed students, with one or two good ones sprinkled among them. The constant challenges, the humiliations, the keyed car, the gangs, the girl with the crush, the embittered colleagues who see their charges as beyond salvage. Watching all this familiar stuff play out on the screen is actually reassuring, comforting. It's like going to mass as a child, knowing exactly what rituals to expect. Here come the censer.
I suppose the original, "Blackboard Jungle," back in the 50s, provided the framework that has now turned all but inescapable. High school movies that don't have the threat of violence are kind of dull, "Up The Down Staircase." The central problem for most of these school movies about deprived and depraved students is, "How can I reach them?" This one is different, though, and it kept me engaged throughout because the question here is, "CAN I reach them?" The answer is yes, but not without a price. Jackson's victory is Pyrrhic. It wasn't worth the price.
The direction is perfectly ordinary and without distinction. The script at time stumbles all over the place, like one of those Chicano kids on tequila. At the climax, it drops dead with a speech.
Jackson is a wounded saint, having been stabbed in the back in a Brooklyn school before moving to L.A. He never loses his temper, no matter whether provoked by some teen-aged moron, betrayed by his principal, or accused of murder by the blond colleague who has previously groveled at his feet and practically denuded herself in his presence.
The blond, Kelly Rowan, is almost perfect in the part, though it's overwritten like all the others. She's not quite Hollywood pretty and she's at the age of near desperation. There have been a couple of truly fine black actors since Sidney Poitier and Samuel L. Jackson is among them. He's a magnetic presence. And his range as an actor is expansive. He can be a thoroughly believable savvy street gangsta, as in "Jackie Brown," or a straight teacher with glasses, as he is here. Morgan Freeman is able to do the same thing, but his age now restricts the variety of his roles. He can't be the perspicacious pimp who kicks a client in the balls anymore, as he did in "Street Smart." Now he's got to be Jung's "wise old man." I won't give away the ending because (1) it's silly and (2) it's unexpected.