There are few movies that make teaching look more quietly unappealing than�Won't Back Down, which is quite an achievement, given its naked aims to inspire. The film, directed by�Daniel Barnz (Beastly), who also co-wrote the screenplay with Brin Hill, doesn't by any means hate teachers ? it merely holds them to impossible, wild-eyed standards. Inside every classroom instructor, it posits, is a Stand and Deliver-worthy�saint who's merely being kept down by those pesky teachers union regulations that are crushing spirits and encouraging them not to try. It's the system that's preventing them from handing out their home numbers so students can call for help. It's the system that's holding them back from staying after school to work with anyone who needs it, and from loving their students even more than the kids' parents do. The film is all for teaching as a calling. What it doesn't do is offer it the dignity of also being a job.
Like the trio of recent documentaries,�The Cartel, The Lottery and heavy-hitter�Waiting for "Superman"�(with which�Won't Back Down shares a funder,�Phil Anschutz's Walden Media),�Barnz's film trudges into the bi-partisan mire of education reform and insists with zealous fervor that the unions are the problem for our failing public schools. Won't Back Down isn't a doc, it's a drama with the barest pretense of being anything more than a vehicle for getting its message across. And, as a piece of propaganda, the phoniness of its faux populist tone makes it maddening to sit through, regardless of how you feel about its stance on schools.
Maggie Gyllenhaal�plays Jamie Fitzpatrick,�a single mom in Pittsburgh, PA who leads the charge against the lousy public school where her daughter Malia (Emily Alyn Lind)�has ended up after private-school tuition ceased to become an option. Jamie is…
Jessica Simpson Zooey Deschanel Aaliyah Abbie Cornish Adriana Lima Adrianne Curry Adrianne Palicki Aisha Tyler
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