The admitted crisis in American public education gets a simple-minded cinematic treatment in “Won’t Back Down,” an inspirational message drama about mothers so concerned about their kids’ local school that they decide to literally take the place over. The picture is a slick package, and will certainly appeal to parents who’d like to think themselves more concerned and capable than the professionals they often look on as slackers and burn-outs. But in the end it’s the sort of earnest but pandering pabulum that might do more harm than good.
The script, which is euphemistically said to be “inspired by true events,” is based on the “parent trigger law” movement, which aims to turn low-performing public schools into high-expectation charter ones by replacing hidebound administrators and attracting dedicated, though non-tenured, teachers. The alteration is difficult, requiring a majority of parents and current teachers to approve and the school board to vote in favor of the individual plan.
At least that’s the case in this fictional take on the subject. The catalyst is single mom Jamie Fitzpatrick (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who though working two jobs (as a bartender and a clerk at a car dealership) can’t afford to send her dyslexic daughter Malia (Emily Alyn Lind), trapped in a second-grade class presided over by cynical, dead-wood Deborah (Nancy Bach), to a private school. She notices that Nona Alberts (Viola Davis), the teacher in the other second-grade class, seems more involved, but can’t persuade the principal (Bill Nunn) to switch Malia to that class.
As it happens, Nona has problems of her own. Her son (Dante Brown) may have a learning disability as well—perhaps as the result of an accident revealed in tear-jerker mode late in the running-time—and her husband (Lance Reddick) is walking out on her. But when Jamie sees Nona at a lottery to determine which children will win the few spots in an outstanding charter school run by a principled educator (Ving Rhames), she decides to ask for her help in going the “public-to-charter” route that’s she’s learned about from an encounter with a sympathetic school board clerk. Nona’s understandably reluctant, but ultimately the two join forces in the campaign.
What follows is a catalogue of the obstacles they face—and naturally overcome. There’s the suspicion of Nona’s fellow teachers like her long-time chum Breena (Rosie Perez), who initially see her as endangering their security but must be persuaded to go along in sufficient numbers to make the plan feasible. There’s the reluctance of many parents to buck the system. There’s the natural inertia of the school board, which seems stacked against the idea despite some under-the-table support from its outgoing president Olivia Lopez (Marianne Jean-Baptiste).
But most importantly, there’s the opposition of the teachers’ union. Writer-director Branz has been quoted as saying that he doesn’t see “Won’t Back Down” as an anti-union movie, but it’s hard to take him seriously. Union president Arthur Gould (Ned Eisenberg) pontificates about the important work early unions did in protecting workers, but stoops to scummy tactics to derail the change, including distributing scurrilous flyers attacking Jamie and Nona. The only one of Nona’s colleagues seen on the union side of the argument is the appalling Deborah, who’d probably be twirling a moustache if she were male. And the only union exec who possesses any redeeming qualities, Evelyn Riske (Holly Hunter), smilingly offers Jamie what amounts to a bribe—a free ride for Malia to a posh private school that caters to children with special needs—before seeing the error of her ways and quitting her job to return to teaching.
Of course, it’s obligatory to add a touch of romance to the “underdog wins” formula, and so Gyllenhaal is attracted to hunky Michael Perry (Oscar Isaac), another teacher at the school, who dithers interminably between his union roots and his feelings for Jamie before predictably coming down decisively on her side in the final reel.
The performances, unfortunately, are variable. Davis, as usual, is formidable, investing all of her scenes with a sense of reality even when they reek more of soap opera than drama. Unhappily Gyllenhaal fails to match her, opting for a generically bubbly approach only occasionally punctuated by flashes of real feeling (as in a scene in which a distraught Malia says some hateful things to her). It’s much the same act she did in the recent “Hysteria,” and it’s no more welcome here. Isaac is pleasant (as in the recent “10 Years”) but little else, while Hunter is merely prim and dispassionate. The rest of the supporting cast do what’s expected of them, but can’t bring any more to their thinly-written characters than that, though both Lind and Brown are extremely appealing youngsters and certainly tug at your heartstrings.
Cinematographer Roman Osin gives much of the picture a strangely dark look, but his compositions and camera movements are carefully gauged to show off the Pittsburgh locations, and the technical contributions are solid across the board. And Marcelo Zarvos contributes a score that accentuates every emotional point.
It doesn’t help that “Won’t Back Down” is burdened with a title that makes it sound like one of those martial arts movies pitting a downtrodden underdog against some malevolent brute. Unfortunately, it’s about as broad and simplistic as they are, though it deals with a real-world issue of extraordinary national significance. Perhaps someday a film will appear that treats the subject with the subtlety and sensitivity it deserves. This anti-union jeremiad, which closes with a simple assumption that Jamie and Nona’s newly-won experiment is going to work (something that the variable success rates of charter schools would seem to throw very much in doubt) isn’t it.