THE SUBSTITUTE
A film review by Dr. T. White
Copyright 1997 Flying Inkpot
Director: Robert Mandel Written by: Roy Frumkes Alan Ormsby Rocco Simonelli Cast: Tom Berenger, Diane Venora, Ernie Hudson Rating: ** out of ***** Run Time: Approx. 114 Minutes
The premise of this movie is, well, pretty far-fetched. Tom Berenger plays Shale, a mercenary who is temporarily out of work (those fools at the CIA have denied his existence just because he and his buddies botched a job in Cuba). Fortunately, his girl friend (Diane Venora), a teacher at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, gets her knee cap broken by a disgruntled student, creating a job opening for Shale as a substitute teacher. Not telling his girl friend, who might object on pedagogical grounds, he creates a number of fake higher degrees for himself (from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, et al) and begins his tenure as a high school teacher.
The students (junkies, drug dealers, gang members, sleazy sluts, ice-pick wielders...you get the picture) don't really take to him right away, so he hits one in the face with a can and breaks a few fingers. This gets their attention to a certain extent, so he tells them the story of the Vietnam War: "See, some homeboys from the North tried to muscle in on the turf of the homeboys from the South." Oh yeah, now they can dig it; the problem is just that nobody ever explained it properly before.
But wait! There are drugs being dealt in the school itself! And behind the whole scheme, in cahoots with the head gang, the KOD (no, not "cod", but "Knights of Destruction"...really!), is none other than...the upright, ex-cop principal, played by the forgotten ghostbuster, Ernie Hudson! So Shale does what any good teacher would do. He gets his buddies together, they gather together a bunch of bazookas and other major weapons, explosives, and cool stuff like that, and they have a big showdown against the drug dealers and KOD at the high school.
OK, so the premise is not just far-fetched, it's downright dumb. If this were a Hong Kong action comedy, we might just accept it, but it takes itself far too seriously to be truly fun. Oh, it has its moments; how one can truly hate a movie in which huge (really HUGE) amounts of cocaine are delivered in school busses? And to be fair, it is almost never really boring, as the action is interrupted by only short sequences of actual story.
But over all, this is pretty much a made-for-TV movie with more (and bigger) explosions and more foul language. In fact, it reminded me of "Miami Vice" without the production values, babes in skimpy bikinis, and pastels. If you can sneak into the theater without paying, go for it. Otherwise, wait for video.
The Flying Inkpot Rating System: * Wait for the TV2 broadcast. ** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha! *** Pretty good, bring a friend. **** Amazing, potent stuff. ***** Perfection. See it twice.
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