One Eight Seven (1997)

Director: Kevin Reynolds                              Writer: Scott Yagemann
Film Score: David Darling                             Cinematography: Ericson Core
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, John Heard, Kelly Rowan and Clifton Collins Jr.

The numbers One Eight Seven, we learn in the first few minutes of Kevin Reynolds’ public education drama, are the police code for homicide. Teacher Samuel L. Jackson finds it written all over the pages of the science book on his desk. Naturally he goes to one of the councelors and is told it means nothing. But of course the audience, as well as Jackson, knows that’s not true. A year and half later, after moving to Los Angeles, Jackson tells a fellow teacher that what he’s angriest about is the robbery. They stole, “my passion, the spark, my unguarded self. I miss him. I want him back.” Can he get his old self back? Should he really want to? And how can he expect do that by moving from one socio-economic disaster of a school to another, even though it’s three thousand miles away?

Like all films about public education, this one is long on problems and short on solutions. The fact is, public education has always been a flawed system from its inception. For a hundred and fifty years it worked, however, due to external pressure from home. The last fifty years, however, have exposed the primary flaw: you can’t make people--kids in this case--do anything they don’t want to do. There have always been kids who want to learn, just as there will always be kids who refuse to do anything. The other eighty percent simply go along with whatever the dominant culture of the classroom is. The fact is, while this film portrays the worst kind of schools, there is little difference between them and every other classroom in the country. Teachers have no power and so the people who stay in teaching are typically those who can’t teach, and ultimately the kids learn very little. The only difference between this film and what goes on in every other high school in the country . . . is simply the degree of the dysfunction.

Kevin Reynolds has had a fitful career, though he has directed some popular and well-made films. He’s a favorite of Kevin Costner ever since helming his Robin Hood, and went on to direct Waterworld and his Hatfield & McCoy’s miniseries. But in a career that has spanned almost twenty-five years, he’s only directed eleven films. Screenwriter Scott Yagemann has been primarily a television writer and this script came out of his experience as a former teacher himself. When Jackson attempts to maintain discipline, and his own dignity, in his classroom he incurs the wrath of one of the school’s minor gang leaders who begins a systematic campaign of revenge. Finally, when Jackson’s been pushed past the breaking point the film turns into an updated version of Death Wish. And that’s too bad.

In his review of Mississippi Burning, the brilliant film reviewer Frederick Barton expressed a similar disappointment. As an audience we are expected to identify with Jackson and feel good about his finally taking action in a system in which he is given no power and feels helpless. But how in the world is that supposed to really satisfy when his only solution is to break the law? Does it go anywhere near solving the problem? Not at all. In fact, by indulging in the same sort of terrorism that his students subject him to, Jackson himself becomes no better than they are. And then what are we left with? There is one aspect of One Eight Seven that is brilliant, however, the ending. It is the perfect metaphor for education in America today. Whether it’s teachers or students, there are no happy endings for anyone.