Film Noir Review
"Freedom Writers" earns top grade!
by Judy Marker, Movie critic
Two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank ("Million Dollar Baby"), delivers a "knock-out" performance as Long Beach High School teacher Erin Gruwell in "Freedom Writers," a movie every middle and high school student should be made to see.
The true story is both powerful and inspirational and shows what can be achieved when students, no matter their background, are given the encouragement and personal attention by a dedicated teacher to strive for success.
It is the 1980s and Gruwell receives her first teaching assignment of four English classes with 150 students at Wilson High School. Formerly the California city’s premier high school, it has been re-established as a learning school for low achievers.
"Freedom Writers" follows just one of her classes but through all four years as we see the challenges and obstacles she and her students had to overcome.
The class we follow is comprised of 35 students who are either African American, Asian or Latino except for a lone White student and come primarily from low-income and broken homes. Most have never even been out of Long Beach.
Her husband Scott Casey (Patrick Dempsey "Grey’s Anatomy") quickly finds himself almost totally alone as she takes a second and then third job to help buy school supplies for her students. At first supportive of her efforts, he sees less and less of her.
Her father Steve (Scott Glenn "Training Day"), a successful attorney while upset with his daughter for giving up a potential law career, soon becomes supportive. But even he cannot understand her extreme desire for her students to be successful. Gruwell comes up with the idea of providing journals in which she encourages her students to write about their daily lives.
These journals became part of "The Freedom Writers’ Diary," a published collection of extremely personal stories that detailed the hard lives of her students.
Her teaching successes also brought constant opposition from fellow educators led by administrator Margaret Campbell (Imelda Staunton "Nanny McPhee") who believed it a waste of time and money for Gruwell to try and teach her students about the Jewish Holocaust and Anne Frank let anything else.
When Gruwell and her class not only study about it, but fund-raise enough money to bring Miep Gies (Pat Carroll) the Dutch woman who actually helped the Frank family during World War II to the school, they become a sensation.
While these are all excellent performances, the real stars of "Freedom Writers" are the mostly unknown actors who play her students. Heading the list is Andre (Mario "Step Up") and Eva (April Lee Hernandez).
Written and directed by Richard LaGravenese ("The Bridges of Madison County"), he gives us an educational classic based on "The Freedom Writers’ Diary."
"Freedom Writers" is rated "PG-13" for violent content, some thematic material and language and has a running time of two hours and three minutes. Matching a powerful and positive story with a first-rate cast, "Freedom Writers" receives my highest rating of "5-J’s/See it now!"
