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One Eight Seven
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Wikipedia article
'One Eight Seven' (also known as '187') is a 1997 American crime thriller film directed by Kevin Reynolds. It was the first top-billed starring role for Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a Los Angeles teacher caught with gang trouble in an urban high school. The film's name comes from the California Penal Code Section 187, which defines murder.
The original screenplay was written in 1995 by Scott Yagemann, a Los Angeles area high school substitute teacher for seven years. He wrote the screenplay after an incident when a violent transfer student had threatened to kill him and his family. Yagemann reported the threat to the authorities and the student was arrested. About a week later, he was called by the district attorney to testify against the student in a court of law, where the student was being prosecuted for stabbing a teacher's aide a year before. This annoyed Yagemann, who had not been told about it beforehand, and led to him writing the screenplay. He claimed that 90% of the film's material is based on incidents that had happened to him and other teachers in real life.
Plot
Trevor Garfield (Samuel L Jackson) is a high school science teacher at Roosevelt Whitney High School, a high school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Dennis Broadway (Method Man), a gangster student to whom he had given a failing grade threatens to murder him, writing the number 187 (the California police code for homicide) on every page in a textbook.
Garfield knows that this is a warning and tries to report his concerns to the administration. Garfield realises that Dennis wants to transfer back to his old school but in order to do so he needs to have good grades. The administration ignore Garfield's warning, and eventually Dennis ambushes Garfield in the school hallway, stabbing him in the back and side abdominal area multiple times with a shiv.
Garfield survives, though badly wounded, and is shown resuming his teaching career as a substitute teacher fifteen months later. He is relocated to John Quincy Adams High School in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, but unfortunately he is assigned to another class of unruly students, including a Chicano tag crew by the name of "Kappin' Off Suckers" (K.O.S.). Their leader, Benito "Benny" Chacn (Lobo Sebastian), a felon attending high school as a condition of probation, makes it clear to Garfield that there will be no mutual respect.
Tension mounts when a fellow teacher, Ellen Henry (Kelly Rowan), confides that Benny has also threatened her life, an action against which the administration of the school refuses to take action as they fear the threat of legal action. After Benny murders a rival tagger in cold blood, he disappears, and Benny's unstable tag partner, Csar Sanchez (Clifton Collins Jr.) takes over as leader. Csar embarks on a campaign of intimidation against Garfield which is started by the theft of Garfield's watch (which is a family heirloom). Garfield reports this to the principal who backs away taking any action in case Csar were to sue the school for defamation.
Ellen and Garfield develop a close friendship that approaches the beginnings of a relationship, but is stymied by Garfield's destabilizing behavior and his confrontational approach to dealing with the K.O.S.. Meanwhile, alcoholic dispirited teacher Dave Childress (John Heard) starts to look into Garfield's past and learns of his earlier assault, but rather than report Garfield, he informs him of his admiration while showing him the pistol he carries in the school for defense.
Csar amps up the conflict between Garfield and the K.O.S. by killing Jack, Ellen's dog. Later after spraying cartoon graffiti depicting a dead dog, Csar is shot with a syringe filled with morphine attached to the end of an arrow. He passes out, and wakes up to find one of his fingers removed. Upon finding the finger, Csar finds the letters "R U DUN" ("are you done?") tattooed as a warning.
Later Garfield witnesses a student he is tutoring Rita Martnez (Karina Arroyave), facing abuse from both the K.O.S. and Childress. Rita later drops out of school. Garfield tries to intervene and approaches the school administration but is met with bureaucracy and is prevented from intervening. Later Benny's dead body is discovered in the Los Angeles River, apparently of a drug overdose. However, it is revealed that Garfield took matters into his own hands, killing Benny and severing Csar's finger. Ellen uncovers Garfield's spiral into violence and being unable to understand his ferocity, she leaves him.
Csar and the K.O.S. believe Garfield to be responsible for the murder of Benny and plan to retaliate in kind. Csar, inspired by the film 'The Deer Hunter' traps Garfield at his home, and (together with his gang) they force Garfield into a contest of Russian roulette with Csar. Csar, in a machismo mode, loads the revolver with two bullets. The gang are shocked at how Garfield doesn't beg for his life, but participates without flinching, and even openly confesses to killing Benny as well as cutting off Csar's finger. After each round, Garfield talks about the lost-cause lifestyle Csar has led. Garfield, on the penultimate round, takes his turn and survives; instead of handing the weapon to Csar, Garfield takes the next turn and the weapon goes off, killing Garfield instantly. Driven by his sense of honor and ignoring the protests of his horrified friends, Csar insists on taking his rightful turn and ends up killing himself. Stevie Littleton (Jonah Rooney) leaves the house, disillusioned with the K.O.S. life and distraught at the senseless loss of both lives.
On graduation day, Rita is shown to have completed her studies and graduated along with the now former K.O.S. member Stevie. Rita offers a tribute to Garfield by reading an essay about him. The essay incorporates the theme of the Pyrrhic victory and Ellen leaves the school.
The closing narration cites a 1994 MetLife-Louis Harris Survey stating one in nine teachers has been attacked in school and 95 percent of those attacks were committed by students, as well as the movie being written by a teacher.
Cast
* Samuel L. Jackson as Trevor Garfield
* John Heard as Dave Childress
* Kelly Rowan as Ellen Henry
* Clifton Collins Jr. as Csar Snchez
* Tony Plana as Principal Garca
* Karina Arroyave as Rita Martnez
* Demetrius Navarro as Paco
* Lobo Sebastian as Benito "Benny" Chacn
* Jack Kehler as Larry Hyland
* Jonah Rooney as Stevie Littleton
* Method Man as Dennis Broadway
* Kathryn Leigh Scott as Anglo Woman
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 30% based on reviews from 27 critics.
Roger Ebert rated the film 2 out of 4 stars, complimenting the "strong and sympathetic performance" by Samuel L. Jackson and saying that the movie "has elements that are thoughtful and tough about inner-city schools" but it also contains "elements that belong in a crime thriller or a war movie". He also felt that the movie's "destination doesn't have much to do with how it got there".
The film grossed $5.7 million domestically in its theatrical release.
Soundtrack
The film's soundtrack was released under the title 'Music from the Motion Picture 187' on July 29, 1997 through Atlantic Records. Unlike films like 'Dangerous Minds' and 'The Substitute' that dealt with similar subject matter, this soundtrack did not receive an urban music soundtrack. Instead the soundtrack was made up of trip hop, a combination of hip hop and electronica.
; Track listing
See also
* List of hood films
References
Further reading
* Bernstein, Nell. ([https://www.webcitation.org/6HmDTRofq?url=http://web.archive.org/web/20000818005750/http://www.salon.com/aug97/mothers/187970806.html Archive], , [https://www.webcitation.org/6HmGWmQDJ?url=http://web.archive.org/web/19990128134231/http://www.salonmagazine.com/aug97/mothers/187970806.html Archive]) 'Salon.com'. August 6, 1997. - Review of the film
* Fassett, Deanna L.; Warren, John T. "A Teacher Wrote This Movie": Challenging the Myths of "One Eight Seven" [movie review]. 'Multicultural Education', v7 n1 p30-33 Fall 1999. ISSN . ERIC Number: EJ594392 - [http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ594392 Information] at ERIC
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