Freedom Writers (2007) 7/10

Starring : Hilary Swank, Patrick Dempsey, Scott Glenn, Imelda Staunton, April Lee Hernandez
Director : Richard LaGravenese
Running Time : 122 mins

It's the early 1990s, and Erin Gruwell (Swank) is an inner city teacher in LA, desperately trying to teach her students that life isn't all about fighting and sticking with your own race. As she struggles to teach her kids about racial hatred, she latches onto The Diary Of Anne Frank as an example of triumph over adversity and convinces her students to write journals so she can learn more about them.

This is an effective movie, but it does irk me how annoyingly self righteous the kids in this movie were. Granted, it's important to the plot to the make their attitude changes as effective as possible, but they could have been a little less irritating to begin with. Swank is perfect as the teacher who wants to change the world, and her inability to see the bad in these kids parallels well with the characters of the kids themselves.

You’ll like this if you liked : Dangerous Minds