187

There was a rash of inner city school movies that came out in the 80’s and 90’s like Dangerous Minds, The Substitute, Stand and Deliver and Lean on Me.  I thought 187 (the police code for homicide) was following in the tradition of teacher arrives at tough predominantly black and/or Latino high school, is shocked to see how fucked up it is, students reject new teacher and make his/her life hell, teacher sticks with it and earns the students’ respect through some unorthodox activity, students turn their lives around, teacher gets fired or attacked, students come to his/her aid, teacher retains his or her job/dignity, everyone lives happily ever after, the end.  Well, some of this happens in our movie but it goes in a totally different direction in general and by the end I didn’t quite know what to make of it.

Sam Jackson (Menace II Society) is Trevor Garfield, a somewhat happy science teacher at a high school in Brooklyn.  He seems to enjoy teaching his class and his students sort of respect him.  Well that is until he sees that someone wrote “187” in huge font on every single page of their textbook.  Trevor’s worried about it and after a brief investigation he finds out that a student (Method Man in his breakout non-self role) is pissed at him for flunking him.  In fact Method Man is so ticked that he stabs Trevor in the back with a giant nail like a dozen times.  I would think this would be enough to kill anyone or maybe paralyze them but it’s not gonna keep Trevor fucking Garfield down.  Cut to fifteen months later where he’s now in L.A. and settling for substitute teaching positions.  He gets a gig at a local high school and his world goes from bad to much worse.

First Trevor goes into the wrong classroom and gets embarrassed.  Then he runs into Benny (Lobo Sebastian (Ghosts of Mars, Leprechaun in the Hood)) who’s a gangbanger and gives him some attitude.  Trevor discovers later that the pretty computer science teacher, Ellen (Kelly Rowan (Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh)), is being terrorized by him.  The other bad guy in this is Cesar (Clifton Collins Jr. although he’s credited here as Clifton Gonzalez Gonzalez (Tigerland)).  He’s another gangbanger, the toughest kid in class and the cause of most of Trevor’s problems.

Cesar steals Trevor’s watch, smokes weed on school property and kills Ellen’s dog.  I thought the goal of Trevor was to turn Cesar around and make him see the error of his ways but that’s not what’s going on here.  Spoilers.  If you’re actually going to see this movie don’t keep reading.  Instead of being the enlightened professorial sage that we expect, Trevor goes to war.  The incident in New York killed him inside so now he has no patience for troublemakers.  Benny dies fairly early on in the film and as the picture progresses we’re led to believe that Trevor killed him.  We’re also given clues that he drugged Cesar and cut off his finger.  I thought at the end it was going to be revealed that someone else did it and our faith in our lead would be restored.  However when Cesar has finally had enough and confronts Trevor with his gun toting gang Trevor admits to doing the deeds.  He could’ve snapped and just be saying that because he doesn’t care anymore but I believe that he really did kill one student and mangle another.  Then out of nowhere comes a Russian roulette scene (ok fine, Cesar was watching The Deer Hunter before but you don’t think anything’s going to come of it).  Trevor loses it and pulls the trigger three times instead of your usual one time and demands that Cesar play along with him. 

I mean what the fuck?  This movie has such a bizarre feel to it and is very unlike those other inner city school films.  This was directed by Kevin Reynolds and you may know him from the pretty bad Waterworld or the really awful Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.  I actually kind of enjoyed The Count of Monte Cristo (2002) though.  Technically most of the things he tries here don’t work that well.  A couple of examples are that he has the students and classroom be out of focus when Trevor first starts teaching and there’s a scene where there are these shadows of kids playing basketball that get bigger and more aggressive while Trevor and Ellen have an increasingly tense conversion.  New York is shot with icy blue filters while L.A. is hot sticky yellow.  We’ve seen that a lot before but I still think it looks cool and is effective.  Every once in a while Reynolds will throw in a cool shot.  There’s one that’s particularly badass, it’s a close up of a teacher (John Heard (Home Alone, C.H.U.D.)) holding a gun in front of a certificate that reads “excellence in teaching”.  

As for the story side there are some things that are brought up that don’t get resolved and plot devices that are mentioned once and then forgotten about.  The whole story seems kinda out there but the way they get around this is at the end there’s some text that reads “this movie was written by a teacher”.  According to him on the commentary track a bunch of the things in this film actually happened to him in real life.  I’m still reluctant to believe that he killed one of his kids though.

Overall this is a pretty fuckin’ weird movie.  It’s interesting to see a teacher fight back against the students but it wasn’t done explicitly enough.  Most of the accusations are just that, accusations.  The filmmakers leave it up to the audience to decide if Trevor really did do the things he admits to.  The problem is they didn’t make it ambiguous enough.  I think by the end it’s pretty clear that Trevor is capable of the crimes presented to us and that he did carry them out.  So if you’re going to tell us this stuff then why not go all the way and show Trevor committing the murder and de-fingering.  You want to side with the guy because he’s trying to help these kids but at the same time he’s acting worse than the students.  It brings up some intriguing questions about teaching and at what point, if ever, do you give up on certain kids.  What extremes do you go to in order to get through to them?  Would you sacrifice your life to set one kid straight?

Do I recommend it?  I guess so.  I’m not very enthusiastic about it but it’s definitely a twist on the sub-genre.  Sam Jackson’s kind of stiff in it most of the time but he lets loose at the end which is the best part of the movie.  John Heard is entertaining as a burned out teacher that keeps a gun in his desk drawer.  Kelly Rowan is alright but I don’t buy for a second that her character and Trevor get together.  The part where Rowan tells her students about e-mail is very outdated and funny to watch.  It’s kind of annoying when I don’t know how to feel about a film but that’s the magic of cinema, right?