THE SUBSTITUTE 4: FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 2001 filmcritic.com
filmcritic.com
Admittedly, I'm not up on all the nuances of the Substitute series, which began with Tom Berenger in 1996 as the mercenary-cum-schoolteacher and continues this day with The Substitute 4. Treat Williams took over the role in Substitute 2, and as he watches his career fall further and further into John Travolta/direct-to-video land, we can only snicker at his plight.
One of the more audacious plots I've seen, this sub's mission is to infiltrate a Neo-Nazi group at a military prep school and bust it up. It's not hard to find the Nazis -- they're the ones with bizarrely shaved heads and the swastika brands. But when they start shooting bazookas at the nosy substitute, well, that's when things get rough.
Equally audacious is the casting of vamp redhead model Angie Everhart as a military medical officer. I will say she looks good in uniform, though she's out of it as much as she has it on.
Naturally, The Substitute 4 is wholly ridiculous, and its silly tagline invites far too many obvious jokes at its expense. That said, it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be -- and at least it goes out on a limb and says that Nazism was a really bad thing. Kudos for that one.
RATING: **
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Jamie Thraves Producer: Sally Llewellyn, John Stewart Writer: Jamie Thraves Starring: Aidan Gillen, Kate Ashfield, Dean Lennox Kelly, Tobias Menzies, Rupert Procter, Samantha Power, Deanna Smiles, Maggie Lloyd Williams
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