Given that even the best of actors cannot make magic with a terrible script, it is surely the writer of this movie who must take a tomato in the face.
The criminal culture of an inner-city high school is the focus of the very bleak "187." For these students, criminal is the occupation of choice, high school the apprenticeship. Administrators have surrendered control to the gangs who rule the halls, and the challenge for teachers is to protect themselves from their students. There are few exceptions to the rule of violence.
In this ugly hopelessness, the idealistic Trevor Garfield (Samuel L. Jackson) plumbs his imagination for ways to make his subject relevant to kids who have become arrogant and brutal. In the middle of a crowded hallway, one of them traps the terrified Garfield and stabs him repeatedly and viciously with a long nail.
At that moment, the movie makes the first of a series of fatal missteps. Still in shock from the stabbing, we are given a screen caption that says, "fifteen months later." Suddenly, with no knowledge of the man we have just met, we are in Los Angeles, where Garfield, physically healed, reports to work in a school worse than the one that destroyed his spirit in Brooklyn.
This is a man with no friends or family, so we can only guess at his emotional state. How do we know his spirit was destroyed? Only because he tells us so--twice. The script calls for him to glare strongly, wordlessly, while revealing nothing of his inner life.
Depriving the hugely talented Samuel L. Jackson of his innovative tools is ridiculous. A man who has consistently shown his love of wordplay, he is confined here in a cocoon of silence. With the weight of his dignity and intelligence, Jackson at least conveys the chilling fear of teaching in a criminal culture in which every day unfolds in the shadow of knowing that nothing can stop a student who decides to erase a teacher.
In a bit of notably bad casting, Kelly Rowan plays Ellen Henry, a perky blonde teacher down the hall who wouldn't last a day in the infamous Bungalow 84 of this depraved school. John Heard is Dave Childress, an alcohol-soaked study in disillusionment, who stays on for the paycheck with a gun stashed in his drawer. Heard goes over the top with his drunk scene, trying, it seems, to put some life into the limp script. Karina Arroyave has the great misfortune of having to play the girl who Garfield almost reaches. Her part is laced with the cliches of a dozen movies, particularly a final speech embarrassing in its ineptitude.
Who is responsible for all this? Certainly director Kevin Reynolds, whose "Waterworld" was so appallingly bad. Mr. Reynolds, apparently, has learned nothing from that debacle. Given that even the best of actors cannot make magic with a terrible script, it is surely the writer of this movie who must take a tomato in the face. The final credits announce that a teacher wrote the script. He should be sentenced to study hall for the rest of his natural life.
Film Critic : JOAN ELLIS
Word Count : 500
Studio : Warner Bros.
Rating : R
Running Time: 1h59m
Copyright (c) Illusion