2.5 stars. Rating: PG, for dramatic intensity and brief violence
By Derrick Bang
Advocacy cinema is nothing new,
and in some cases serendipitous timing can help raise public awareness of an
important issue; the most famous example remains The China Syndrome, and its
coincidental proximity to the partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island,
which took place 12 days after the film was released.
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| When Jamie (Maggie Gyllenhaal, left) and Nona (Viola Davis) team up to take over the local public school and — hopefully — build it into something bigger and better, they're faced with an avalanche of paperwork: reams of forms that need to be filled out properly, lest their proposal never even leave the starting gate. |
But dramas that trivialize significant
real-world issues can be extremely irritating, particularly when the filmmakers
resort to ludicrous dollops of soap-style melodrama, as is the case with Won’t
Back Down.
The American public school system
has become a national tragedy, and the many teachers’ unions do themselves no
favors by adhering to hard-line policies that favor their own employment over
the desperate need for reform and bureaucratic streamlining. Yes, it’s a
complicated issue, with economic malaise, parental hostility and student
indifference deserving their share of the blame.
But those fires of parental
hostility have been stoked, in great part, by the system’s apparent refusal to consider
reform, let alone embrace it. And since art always imitates life, we wind up
with the likes of dramas “inspired by actual events” ... which is to say,
thinly suggested by real-world activity but mostly made up.
The passion at work here is
laudable, as are the performances by stars Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
But director Daniel Barnz’s film is clumsy and one-sided, his script — co-written
with Brin Hill — as unbalanced as kid-centric TV sitcoms that score points by
making all adults look like blithering idiots.
It’s perhaps telling to recall
that Won't Back Down was a can’t-miss event at both the Democratic
and Republican conventions, where it drew applause and prompted lively
follow-up panel discussions. And that seems to have been Barnz’s primary goal:
to score political points, rather than to make a good movie.
But people rarely are persuaded
by material that offends their intelligence — and/or pisses them off — and that’s
the core problem here. Few things are more irritating than a filmmaker who
piles on contrivance and artificial tension with a trowel.
