If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent but underrated film

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

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.

Samuel L. Jackson plays teacher Trevor Garfield in a rough NYC high school. He was a dedicated teacher who felt threatened by a student. Why didn't the principal do something? He gets stabbed several times by the student after leaving the apathetic principal's office! Fifteen months later, he ends up in LA. The sub line called him to sub in one of the most rundown, worst high schools in LA. Subs do not make a lot of money! The average person would have walked out of that school and never returned. But Mr. Garfield stayed for a while until another apathetic principal fired him! Why did Mr. Garfield cry in front of the principal? Embarrassing! And why did he let a female student come into his house anyway? She ended up naked on his sofa! It is obvious that the administration let the students walk all over the teachers in that school. Caesar and Bennie should have been expelled and sent to a detention home! And the history teacher who had a gun in his desk should have been fired on the spot and have his teacher's license revoked! There was one thing that was never proved in the movie. Did Mr. Garfield kill Bennie and cut off Caesar's finger?

Teacher Trevor Garfield survives a stabbing by a student, moving from New York to Los Angeles, with a different perspective on life, he resumes teaching as a substitute. But Trevor finds that the same old problems still persist, only now he's going to do things his way......One Eight Seven, directed by Kevin Reynolds {The Count of Monte Cristo} and starring as its lead, Samuel L. Jackson {Pulp Fiction}, is another in a long line of teacher and unruly students based plotters. Trace a line from Blackboard Jungle to The Principal, to Class Of 1984, The Substitute, Dangerous Minds and you get the picture. It's a shame then that as a formula, it's now looking a bit frayed around the edges. Because Reynolds' film does have a couple of things up its sleeve with which to make it a time worthy viewing.Firstly there is Samuel L. Jackson himself. By his own admission, he's someone who will work for food. However he is capable of the odd flash of excellence, regardless the quality of film he is appearing in. He may be adored by the MTV generation for stints in Tarrantino pulpers, but it's with film's like Changing Lanes, and this here Reynolds piece, that he really puts down his marker of ability. As Garfield he is asked to go thru a character makeover during the story, not complex as such, but in a sanity breaking point kind of way. Something that Jackson really gets to grips with and in spite of the bad acting around him {shame shame casting director}. Secondly is the ending itself. No it's not shattering in the pantheon of genre pieces emotionally, but on the intelligence scale it scores rather high. We may have been fed a pre-empt earlier in the piece, but the outcome is no less dramatic for it. Some standard genre stereotyping causes a roll of the eyes, and pet peril and sexy teacher under threat is a touch too tiresome for the older, experienced viewer. But this one deserves a better reputation because it at least tries to offer something different. It doesn't succeed across the board, oh no, but at least it's got enough about it to roll its credits knowing at least it tried to veer away from its genre restraints..and it's got Sammy Jackson on prime form. 7/10

There has been quite a number of movies made on this particular subject, some like the Sidney Poitier one, are classics, some like the one with James Belushi is just plain repetitive and there are some that are mocking the above, like the one with Jon Lovitz, for example. I thought I had seen them all, but this one, I believe in the just purpose of making a point that there is an ever growing part of the "civilized" world that society has completely lost grip of, manages to almost transcend the genre. Almost because after a gritty opening this one completely loses it's voice in the roaring noise they call score, which is inappropriate, and cheap stylistic bravado like the slow-mo. The accentuation of ever growing anxiety and build-up of retaliative power of the main character, however, plus the gratification of, admittedly this viewer's, too, desire to see some sort of retribution, on the other hand, proves it made its point.