187 (1997, VHS)

The gritty 1997 urban drama One Eight Seven has all of the trappings of a tense psychological thriller, but loses focus, and deteriorates into a heavy handed indictment on the dangers of teaching in America's inner- city school systems. It is a disturbing cross between television's Boston Public and the 1995 film on a similar theme, "Dangerous Minds." The main character, Trevor Garfield (Samuel L. Jackson) is a dedicated Science Teacher in a Brooklyn high school. He is threated by a student who writes the police code for homicide, 187, next to Garfield's name in his textbook. After...

Released in 1997, 187 in my mind has been unfairly slept on. Many critics panned it upon its release, and even on epinions, many have given it a lower rating than it deserves. (No disses aimed to those who did downrate 187 by the way, it is your epinion and thought on the film and I respect that. I am just merely disagreeing). Anyway 187 is the emotional, and hard hitting tale of a teachers desire to teach, cruelly stripped away by vicious high students. Samuel L Jackson (Jurassic Park, Pulp fiction etc) stars as idealistic teacher Trevor Garfield, a man with an intense passion for learning...

Let me tell you a little anecdote about what happened in a Public School about a year ago. There was a student whom we ll call Brianni a 7th grader. Brianni was in class with her math teacher whom we shall call Ms. Mateo. Brianni is a continuously disrespectful student who talks in class when she isn t supposed to, uses profanity in class and gets into fights with other girls in school over trivial things such as minor insults. Well on this one such special day, Brianni was eating Mcdonalds fries during class and Ms. Mateo asked her to stop. Brianni ignored her. Ms. Mateo took the bag off...

187 commits a crime that, for movie buffs, may be worse than murder -- it makes Samuel L. Jackson uncool. We need the bad@ss Samuel L. or at the very least the suave, imposing Samuel L. of films like Eve's Bayou. 187 puts Urkel glasses on him and sends him into the hood in a truly bizarre pairing of Dangerous Minds and The Substitute. Jackson is first shown riding a bike into an inner-city high school (yes, there's a metal-detector montage during the opening credits). The bike is for the demonstration he gives of centrifugal force to a classful of disinterested BET "Rap City" extras, one of...