hyped garbage

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A powerful story about urban violence and how it can affect inner city schools, this is an excellent little film. Samuel L. Jackson shines as the teacher fed up with his class who eventually begins exact his own kind of justice by bumping off the problem pupils. An atmosphere of simmering violence is built up along with a lot of suspense in a tale that had me hooked. The reliable Jackson puts in an excellent performance as the bitter teacher who has been driven to the edge.The rest of the cast do their jobs well, especially the actors playing the loathsome pupils. What I liked best about this film was the surprising ending, which sees Jackson and his adversaries playing Russian Roulette round a table. A superb ending to what is an interesting, sometimes difficult to watch but still important film. Forget the watered-down crap that most television stations show, this is raw, forceful viewing which asks questions. In fact it reminded me of some of those gritty '70s films, as it has the same hard edge.

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?

This movie rings true and deserves a good grade. It is very difficult to portray classroom and teacher student relationships authentically and accurately. The scenario has been done many times with varying degrees of success. It must also be mentioned that TV shows have overdone this genre to the point of dumbed down numbness.Unless experienced, the difficulty in reaching and educating in the big city schools today can only be imagined, and fiction usually results in flights of fancy.The students and educators are presented here without much hyperbolic drama, although some encounters are heavy handed but the situations seem real. The ending is abrupt and really takes it to another level, but until then it is a scary and tension filled semester.As this film demonstrates teaching is one of the most underrated, undervalued, under-appreciated, and underpaid of the public service sector. That is unfortunate for our children and the progress of our society.

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.