Won't Back Down Review

Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a single mother and bartender struggling to provide a life for her daughter who is struggling in school in Won't Back Down.  She teams up with one of the teachers (Viola Davis) to not only bring light to the problem of the failing school, but take head on the corrupt bureaucracy that is running the school. 

The preview starts with Jamie's (Gyllenhaal) daughter standing in front of her classmates being belittled by her peers and her teacher for not being able to read.  In fact, the teacher (sure to be a representative of the bureaucratic public school system that has failed our children) puts her in a supply closet to teach her a lesson. We also see another one of the teachers (Davis) at home with her own son struggling to perform at his grade level.  And the fight begins to fix the failing and corrupt school system.  Jamie teams up with the only honorable teacher around (Davis) and takes on the president of the teachers' union (Holly Hunter - returning to the screen after a seven year hiatus) and the principal (Bill Nunn) of the school.

So the preview for Won't Back Down is a little misleading.  Holly Hunter doesn't play the president of the teacher's union, she's a representative.  And she's not evil.  She is really caught between a rock and a hard place trying to truly do what's right and what's best for both sides involved.  The preview makes it look like Jamie (Gyllenhaal) is going head-to-head with her.  The preview also makes it seem like Viola Davis' character is the only teacher in the school who still cares and is willing to do anything about the situation when the truth is, the majority of those teachers are good people who readily stand up to make things right.  There is really only one teacher spotlighted as being completely void of compassion and completely inept at her job, rude to her students and often more interested in playing on her phone rather than the state of her classroom. 

The movie is two hours long, yet I felt there was a lack of scenes between parents and kids or kids in school to raise our emotional connection to the characters and their plight.   There was really only one scene between Davis' character and her son that really I found quite touching.  There have been so many more successful movies about failing schools and the few who dared to take a stand to make things right: Stand and Deliver, The Principal, Lean On Me.  This one pales in comparison as far as execution of the story and emotional attachment to the film.  Though Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis gave great performances, as usual, the film was a disappointment and will only be getting 2.5 stars, at best a renter.  So what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see.