Movie review: Won't Back Down | canada.com

By Katherine Monk

Starring: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Emily Alyn Lind, Rosie Perez, Holly Hunter
Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Every parent wants the very best for his or her children, but not every parent can pay for what the very best may cost.

More than ever, money plays a huge factor in the everydayness of child rearing, and though Won?t Back Down is essentially a movie about a crumbling public education system in the United States, it?s also about socio-economic class and access to opportunity.

Jamie Fitzpatrick (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is your standard single-mom stereotype: She works as a receptionist at a car dealership by day and slings beer at the local sports bar by night. Jamie is a tough chick, but her daughter Malia (Emily Alyn Lind) has special needs.

The other kids make fun of her inability to read, leaving Malia in a fragile and increasingly alienated state. Jamie would like to do something for her kid suffering from dyslexia, but without any financial resources, she?s forced to watch her daughter?s future collapse in front of her eyeballs.

The first act of Won?t Back Down shows us just how far Jamie is willing to go for Malia as she sacrifices every free second to lobby for entry to a better school. Yet, for all the fast-talking and pushing, Jamie makes no progress until she makes a visit to the state education department.

Using her folksy receptionist skills, she learns there?s a little-known legal loophole that allows parents and teachers to take over the administrative functions of a failing school. All Jamie has to do is convince teachers and parents it?s the right thing to do, fill out the paperwork, have a hearing and win the school board vote.

It sounds doable. But everyone tells her the struggle is pointless, because even if she does bring it to a vote, the board tends to keep the status quo for the sake of union peace.

If you saw Davis Guggenheim?s Waiting for Superman, the award-winning documentary about the cycle of dysfunction in U.S. schools, you?ll be more than familiar with the underlying edge in this Daniel Barnz movie as the film sets up a confrontation between concerned parents and the essence of trade-unionism.

It?s practically impossible terrain for a Hollywood movie to navigate because there are big important speeches to be made on either side. Jamie is fighting to give her kid a better future. The union can quote Norma Rae.

To its credit, the script does give each side a decent and sympathetic character to embrace as it distils the journey down to the central theme of parental love. After all, Jamie isn?t the only one looking for a better tomorrow. Along the way, she meets Nona Alberts (Viola Davis), a jaded teacher with a special-needs child of her own.

Nona is on staff at Malia?s school, and Jamie can see that Nona isn?t like the other teachers, but Nona is tired of trying. She?s watched the best and brightest dim with every passing day, and she?s got no fight left.

All she wants is for her son, Cody, to get the best education possible.

When Jamie and Nona discover they both want the same thing, they join forces and launch a campaign to take back their school.

Like I said, this is a Hollywood movie, so once Jamie puts on her olive green T-shirt that reads ?Parentrooper? we kind of know how things are going to end, even before we end up at the big vote scene, or meet the curmudgeonly but sympathetic school board chair.

The rest of the time is spent exploring the issues in one overly scripted scene after another.

From a tear-jerking monologue from Holly Hunter, who plays one of the union leaders, to an intimate tete-a-tete between Jamie and her new beau Michael (Oscar Isaac) ? one of the good teachers at Malia?s school who is also loyal union member ? we get all the emotional baggage surrounding the issues.

Teachers may have passion, but they also recognize the importance of standing together. Similarly, parents love their children, yet they aren?t professional educators. Each side has a valid intellectual and emotional argument, and the movie bends over backwards to accommodate every point of view.

The only real problem is just how lacklustre the scenes are. Despite Davis?s endlessly empathetic eyes and Gyllenhaal?s moxie, just about every note in the mix feels cliched and cooked ? a C-student paper created by rote instead of a product of passion.

Source: http://o.canada.com/2012/09/28/review-troubled-school-film-wont-back-down-gets-a-c/

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