THE STORY: This movie will never be considered a classic. But it could have been a little better. The hell with that it could have been A LOT better. For a time waster its not that bad. My biggest problem with it is that all of the minority characters are lowlifes. (Well, except for the janitor...and he's NUTS!) Still, its an imperfect world. This is an imperfect movie, but watchable.

When high school Teacher Randall Thomasson is gunned down in the street during a carjacking, his brother, Mercenary Supreme, Carl F. Thomasson comes to town to help Randall's daughter, Anya and find out who killed him. Turns out that a gang called the "Brotherhood" is running rampant in the city stealing cars.

Thomasson gets his merc buddy, whose name I've forgotten and didn't write down, to help him. He also depends on help from another teacher, Kara. Thomasson goes undercover as a substitute teacher and takes over Randall's classes. Randall taught the "troubled" kids in the school, a job no other teacher wants. The other teachers even try to dissuade him from it, except for one guy, Warren Drummond. Drummond tells Thomasson that Randall was the only teacher in the school that gave a damn.

The hoodlums in the class, naturally challenge Thomasson on a daily basis, giving him reasons to beat them up or impress them with yo-yos. (if you've seen this you'll know what I mean) Thomasson has to crack several heads in the school restroom during an ambush. The Janitor, Bartee, witnesses this and decides to help Thomasson find out what's going on.

As it happens, Thomasson's niece and Kara find out the vital clues separately but at the same time. Anya's boyfriend, Danny, is a member of the Brotherhood...a secret he lets out by foolishly leaving things he stole from Randall after killing him in his bedroom when he's trying to get some from Anya. Kara uses the internet to find out that Drummond wasn't always a teacher, but a dangerous ex-marine with a criminal past. Anya makes out better than Kara. She beats the [unwrite] out of Danny, while Kara gets killed by Drummond. (Drummond got wind that Kara was suspicious of him.)

Drummond is the mastermind behind the Brotherhood! He uses the students as his street thugs, getting them to jack cars and then chop them in the schools auto shop. He must be a real mastermind too, 'cuz I can't figure out how this scheme wasn't exposed from the get go. Think about it...if one of those kids got caught stealing a car how long do you think it'd take them to rat out on Drummond at the police station? 2 minutes and they'd be singing like Pavarotti! Not to mention doesn't the school administration wonder why the electric bill is little more expensive than it should be?

Thomasson saves the school board and the police the trouble. He confronts Drummond in front of the entire auto-shop class and they have the required fight to the finish. It wasn't as exciting as a Popeye fight to the finish, but hey, we always knew Popeye was going to win those too. That said, Thomasson kills Drummond. Being a movie he can't kill him until the villain makes on last attempt to take his life, but yeah, he does ice him. Then something miraculous happens! Thomasson leaves his niece to go back to mercenarying! She's in High school, but I guess she can take care of herself! The police obviously don't want to talk to him about the five or six thugs he shot or why he killed Drummond in front of about FORTY people! Truly a miracle!

Thomasson was actor Treat Williams. Williams reprises this role in The Substitute 3, which incidentally, is better than this one. Drummond was B.D. Wong. I don't actually know who anyone else in this movie was and truth be told, I don't really care.

Best Lines: "So you [unwrite]ed him, but that wasn't enough so you tried to [unwrite] me too, huh?"-Anya when she discovers that Danny is the one that shot her father.

"What I do is a job...I try not to like it too much...so this is going to be a new experience for me."- Thomasson admits to Drummond that he's a mercenary before kicking his ass.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?:

1.) I'm not in the mood to overly beat this particular dead horse, but why are pretty much all of the bad guys in this flick black? I realize that the part where Thomasson tries to talk Mace into walking the straight and narrow was supposed to be some sort of moment...but it don't work, bubba. Here's why in a nutshell....Mace's reasons for being a hoodlum are of the "You don't know what its like out there! I live in a [unwrite]ed up place" variety. We've all heard that before in a movie where there's inner city kids in trouble. But in this movie there's no evidence that the kids lead a [unwrite]ed up life except that statement. If we actually could see a little bit of Mace's life then maybe some kind of empathy would be possible. But we don't. Not even one minute of it. So the kids in the movie just look like a bunch of ill mannered caricatures.

2.) Waitaminnit...the janitor, Bartee, lives in the sub-basement of the school? I'm not from a major city so someone tell me, is this normal? Janitors that live in a school? What kind of freaked out [unwrite] is that? Think about it...even if you were a school janitor would you want to live in the basement of a school? Talk about a low-expectation havin' mother [unwrite]er!

3.) When the final showdown comes Thomasson kills Drummond (in self defense, sort of) in front of about forty witnesses! In a schoolyard! Get the hell outta here! I won't go into how he could have simply gone after Drummond in a safer place...but how come the cops or any other teachers at least aren't interested in a little something called THE LAW!? You can't just snuff a person, even with good reason, in a SCHOOLYARD and walk away. Not with all those witnesses. As a professional mercenary Thomasson should have known better.

4.) Some master criminal. When Drummond kills Kara he leaves evidence that Morocco Mole all over the place. What a dumbass. He even wipes her blood from his hands off on a teddy bear and places it back on a shelf! What cop wouldn't be able to find out who killed Kara? Drummond's prints are on everything! Homer Simpson could figure it out.

NUDITY AND SEX:  Anya is seen in her bra. That's it.

HUH?: If the Brotherhood is terrorizing the neighborhood so badly, where are the cops? The Brotherhood committed a cold blooded murder and auto theft in front of a witness! Even if the one guy that called the police didn't call the police they would have figured it out anyway! The Brotherhood just simply couldn't maintain the continuos crime spree without the police getting the idea.

Hey call me a cold blooded guy, but I try to be a realist. When the thugs are stunned by Thomasson's little methane cannister trick, the heroes use the chance to escape. If it were me in that situation I'd have started busting caps in the momentarily helpless villains. No [unwrite].  Funk Dat! Why run from a deadly enemy you can kill right then!? Yep...they would've died.

Waitaminnit. If Drummond has this hush-hush super secret past, how come Kara found out about it by surfing the internet? Granted you can glean a great deal of knowledge about a person online, if you look in the right places, but Drummond should have known that and made sure his info was made unavailable somehow. That'd kind of be really important if you're trying to make it as an underworld mastermind. How'd he get a job teaching kids if his shadowy past is readily available for any jerk to read?

Bartee says he gets around the building secretly using the ducts. How freaking big is this school? Bartee is a full grown man! The duct system in this school must be huge! Not only does Bartee crawl around in them he drags the bodies of several gang members with him in order to help Thomasson out. What is this guy, a Horta?* The Ducts can't possibly be that big!

THE TALLY: If you just want an action flick and you don't have any particular expectations of it, this one won't disappoint ya too badly. Or maybe you just want to watch a bunch of flicks dealing with school? I dunno. I only watched it so I could say I saw the whole series! Meaning I have to get around to watching the first one!

*Star Trek fans will get that one.