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Sunday, September 30, 2012

MOVIE REVIEW
Won't Back Down
 The Kids Aren't Alright.  Neither Is This Movie.

Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal in "Won't Back Down", directed by Daniel Barnz.  Fox Walden Media/20th Century Fox
    
by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW                                           
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Teeming with trumped-up outrage and wide-eyed populism Daniel Barnz' teacher-parent school drama "Won't Back Down" refuses to get off its very high and caricatured horse, stacking the deck against characters it avoids shading.  Inspired by true events, "Won't Back Down" chronicles the activism of frustrated teachers like Nona (Viola Davis) and fired-up parents like Jamie (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who decide to create a new type of school at Scottsboro, which they send their children to -- a school that has hit rock bottom with some teachers who just don't care and are there solely for a paycheck.

Set in Pittsburgh, its gloomy atmosphere awash in monochrome at the start before predictably becoming colorful, "Won't Back Down" is replete with one-dimensional, shallow figures designed to tweak your activist pulse.  Rosa Parks Elementary School principal (Ving Rhames) exhorts parents to fight hard for their kids if they are unable to get into the school via lottery.  After her child flounders the reluctant Nona is recruited by the gung-ho Jamie, whose daughter has dyslexia.  A teacher's union representative Evelyn (Holly Hunter) has such a cardboard cut-out executive in her colleague Arthur (Ned Eisenberg) it's near impossible not to ascertain the film's outcome.  Arthur is the film's biggest straw man, an airy maypole figure to be knocked down rather than danced around.

Mr. Barnz' film telegraphs its jabs very early in a teacher-student school genre that is not only familiar but passé.  "Waiting For Superman" comprehensively spelled out the inherent challenges of the U.S. school system, its teachers and students.  Films like "Lean On Me", "Stand And Deliver" and others have detailed true stories regarding schools and individuals that have overcome the odds to make a significant difference to education, managing to be entertaining in the process. 

"Won't Back Down" offers little depth, balance or weight to issues of parental responsibility, aptitude of students or equivocation and neglect by a few teachers and the schools that tolerate or facilitate failure.  Sadly, only Marianne Jean-Baptiste shines in the film in a small but critical role as a school board president.  Ms. Davis and Ms. Gyllenhaal are great stage actors, but those assets don't work in a film that makes easy fish-in-the-barrel targets of its heroes and villains.  With cinema magnifying every movement and inflection their acting looks even more theatrical than it should.  The poorly-written screenplay by Mr. Barnz and Brin Hill doesn't help either.

What makes the film even more of a disappointment is that the true events of parental-teacher recalibration of schools is distorted and obscured by the film's shallowness and oversimplifications.  I wish that "Won't Back Down" tried harder to be an earnest, exploratory movie that gave nuance to the issues of schools and education without appealing to ham-fisted button-pushing it so easily falls prey to.

Also with: Rosie Perez, Lance Reddick, Emily Alyn Lind, Dante Brown, Bill Nunn.

"Won't Back Down" is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association Of America for thematic elements and language.  The film's running time is two hours.      

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