STARS : SAMUEL L. JACKSON, JOHN HEARD, KELLY ROWAN & CLIFTON GONZALEZ GONZALEZ

The back cover of this DVD sprouts some rather disturbing facts about the United States High School System. For instance, 160,000 kids stay home every day because they’re too scared to go to school or that 3 Million thefts occur each year on school campuses which works out to one every SIX seconds

Trevor Farfield (Jackson) is a science teacher who is violently attacked by one of his students because he was flunked by Garfield. Fast forward 15 months and HAVING physcially recovered from his injuries, Garfield is asked to go back to teaching.

Garfield discovers that nothing has changed and that the students are as unruly as ever and just as dangerous, if not more so. Determined not to give in to his past demons, Garfield resumes his teaching with vigor and slowly but surely starts to win over his class.

If movies are anything to go by, then a majority of US high schools are segregated into different races and are, as a whole, extremely violent.

THE EXTRAS

* B-Roll Footage : There are 12 minutes of various looks at the creation of scenes used in the movie. If you keep a close eye out you’ll even see Mel Gibson fooling around on the set as well.

* Cast & Crew Interviews : There are interviews with Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Reynolds (Director), Kelly Rowan, Karina and Clifton, Jonah Rooney, Method Man, Bruce Davey, Steve McEveety and Scott Yagemann. All up these interviews run about 30 minutes and cover a broad range of topics.

* Theatrical Trailer

CONCLUSION

I’m a big fan of SLJ, but this isn’t one of his better efforts. The movie, which is directed by Kevin Reynolds (Waterworld) is perhaps a little long but is still absorbing even if not executed well.