WON’T BACK DOWN – The Review

Review by Barbara Snitzer

I don’t go to movies to be told what to think.   Even if I agree with what I’m being told is right, I am offended by the arrogance of having that decided for me.

This is a movie about kids who can’t read for adults who can’t think.  My logline for this movie would be: it’s the opposite of Stand And Deliver (stupid students and incompetent teachers) crossed with Not Without My Daughter; reduce and simmer mixture until you reach lowest common denominator.

The movie opens with the superimposed text “inspired by actual events.”  That’s quite a suspicious redundancy. My personal opinion (sic) is that all events are actual by definition, unless someone else sees them differently.  I presume this is the case as there is no prologue nor epilogue after the film to that describes the “actual events” the film inspired.  If a school had been founded due to the events depicted, wouldn’t the filmmakers be bragging about it?

I don’t just dislike this movie, I feel deceived.  What is Viola Davis doing in a propaganda-drama?  Marianne Jean-Baptiste?  Bill Nunn?  Maggie Gyllenhaal I understand, but Viola Davis?

Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Jamie Fitzpatrick, but I’m going to call her Maggie because there’s no character in this role.  Maggie is a single mom who’s angry her dyslexic daughter is being allowed to slip through the cracks at a daycare center disguised as a public school.  Maggie works two jobs with unrealistic, annoying enthusiasm and dresses like her real-life Brooklyn hipster self, except she tucks her T-shirts in her jeans to show she’s developed a character. We find out it’s not just parental concern that motivates her;  she herself is dyslexic.  She mixes up numbers all the time, except when she’s reciting hockey game stats that predate her birth to impress men.

Why can’t the actress who plays Maggie’s daughter (Vanessa Paradis lookalike Emily Alyn Lind) pretend she can’t read in class?  Because she has a bad teacher, Yvonne (Nancy Bach, quite funny in a thankless role). Miss Bad texts during class and lets the kids play and yell.  She’s not even a good babysitter.  Maggie’s request to get her daughter transferred to another class is refused; her daughter is doomed.

Maggie gets so angry she goes down to the School Bureaucracy Headquarters.  By flirting with the receptionist, she finds out that if she can recruit a teacher to her cause, the bad school can be replaced with a new one.  She picks Viola Davis (as would I) who plays Nona Alberts, whom I’m going to call “Miss Nono” because that’s what she says the first third of the movie as she resists Maggie’s pleas.

But not all the teachers are bad.  Michael Perry (Oscar Isaac) is a good teacher.  He makes up songs and seems to not hate children. Interestingly, a remark about his being at this school through the prestigious Teach For America program is an aside easily missed.  That detail distracts from the “teachers are bad” paradigm.

But the real enemy is the teacher’s union, who protect bad teachers.  The head of the teachers’ union Arthur Gould (Ned Eisenberg) is a nasty man who doesn’t care about kids because they don’t pay taxes.

Of course the reality isn’t that black and white.  There is a need for a system to remove incompetent, tenured teachers.  Teachers should be paid a lot more for what they do.  Parents’ involvement in their kids’ education should be required; the parents themselves need to be taught that does not mean they should be doing their kids’ homework.

Maggie finally enlists Miss Nono to her cause.  Miss Nono starts planning for the new school and makes the mistake of not telling the other teachers before they find out themselves.  She doesn’t want to tell them that her plans will eliminate all the protections they get from the union. Predictably, the teachers freeze her out of their clique just as effectively as the students they teach.  Miss Nono has lost her friends.  Oh, and her marriage has fallen apart too.  Did I mention she has a learning-disabled son as well?

Not every parent or teacher supports the idea of a new school.  They are receiving negative brochures and flyers from the union that not only point out the arguments against the change, but attack Maggie and Miss Nono personally.  oooh!

Mr. Perry makes an eloquent defense for the union; it protected the teacher who inspired him.  Unfortunately, by the time he speaks up, the other teachers have been converted.  His point is answered with palliative assurances that of course the teachers will have jobs, they just won’t have union contracts.  That convinces Mr. Perry that continued resistance is futile.  Or perhaps, he switches sides because he’s missing sex with Maggie who by this time has seduced him, then kicked him out for not supporting her cause.

Thanks to montages, we are spared having to see the real work that would be required to enlist parents and other teachers, not to mention start a new school in two months.  We see one night of door-knocking and a pep rally with printed T-shirts and matching cookies- just the good parts.

Maggie and Miss Nono pass through bureaucratic hurdles with an ease that buttresses any doubt that these “actual events” are fiction.

If you’ve ever watched Oprah or understand the description “Lifetime movie” you know where this movie is headed. The path is not smooth. There is expositional character assassination of Miss Nono to endure.  The final hearing is drawn out in manipulative, badly constructed suspense.

By the way, this movie was produced with workers from various unions. The Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) is the union for performers. The minimum daily SAG rate is $655, to which ten percent is added to cover their agent’s fee, per diems and travel costs are additional as well.  Do you think the teachers’ unions offer a payment scale even close to the one those acting as teachers have?

1 of 5 Stars

Read more of Barbara’s review at her blog Le Movie Snob HERE

http://lemoviesnob.com/