Wonderful Movie

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Morgan Freeman, Beverly Todd, Lynne Thigpen and Robert Guillaume star in John Avildsen's 1989 drama based on a true story. This takes place in New Jersey and Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption) plays Joe Clark, a former teacher turned principal who is asked to clean up inner-city high school, Eastside after 20 years that's become drug-infested and lacks education. He gets off to a rough start with his strict methods, but eventually turns things around and gains loyalty and respect of his students and staff. Todd plays Miss Levias, his assistant, the late, Thigpen plays Mrs. Barrett, a parent who dislikes him and Guillaume (Benson) plays Frank Napier, the school superintendent. Freeman is great in this as usual and I think it's one of his best films. I recommend this good 80's drama.

This is a very underrated and under-appreciated film based on a true story of a New jersey school principal who is faced with the task of trying to turn a struggling school back around.This concept has been done many times before like in dangerous minds and other alike movies but this movie is different as it came first, is based on a true story and lastly that Morgan Freeman absolutely nails this role. All of the acting is strong in this film, even though there are a lot of no name one time actors in this movie the main characters are strong and again Morgan Freeman gives the performance of his life.If you are a Morgan Freeman fan and have not seen this movie you need to watch.... NOW!!!!

When the movie starts, we see Joe Clark teaching class at Eastside High School in 1967. His students are intelligent, well-groomed, and well-behaved. He quits because the teachers' union has sold out to the school board or something vague like that. Twenty years later, the school has become so bad it makes the one in "Blackboard Jungle" (1955) look like the Blackboard Tropical Rainforest. The students are the meanest, most vicious bunch of high-school hoodlums ever displayed on the big screen.Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention one more difference: all the clean-cut, intelligent students in the school in 1967 are white; most of the students in the school twenty years later are African American, with some Latinos, and a mere handful of whites. When I first saw this, I wondered if the movie had been produced by the Ku Klux Klan, because it comes across as a racist's worst nightmare. But, since the story is true, I guess those were the facts, and they just went with it. When Clark is asked to become the principal to help improve the students' test scores, I wondered how he could possibly do anything with them. Well, I don't want to take anything away from Clark, but not only does he have a bunch of security guards with him when he arrives, but on the second day, he also expels a whole bunch of students. Anybody could straighten out a school with dictatorial powers like that. Think how much Glenn Ford could have accomplished in "Blackboard Jungle" if he could have expelled Vic Morrow on the second day of class. Of course he succeeds with the remainder of the students, and all is well.Toward the end, a girl tells him she is pregnant. We never find out what she did about it. That way those who are pro-life can imagine her keeping the baby, and those who are pro-choice can imagine her having an abortion. Very clever, Hollywood.

Joe Clark is a poor choice for a movie hero, assuming this biography is at all accurate. Professionally, he should not have been in charge of anything or anyone, and I find it hard to believe that the school improved under his leadership as depicted. What the students needed most in this school was a sense that they create their own community and have to live in it. They got a charismatic fanatic, whose authority is arbitrary and capricious--everything in the school was about Joe Clark and nothing else. Perhaps I just mistrust/dislike hero stories, but learning this kind of devotion to an individual is not a substitute for learning to participate in a community.