The Substitute

An action film set in a Miami high school. Shale is a mercenary. He comes back from a job abroad with his team; it went badly and the team is close to breaking up. His partner Jane teaches at a high school. She witnesses something involving a gang there, is attacked and injured. The police do nothing. Shale gets into the same school as a substitute teacher on false papers. There is no order in the classroom. On the first day he faces the students and uses his own method. He teaches on one side and investigates what is going on in the school on the other. The trail takes him somewhere unexpected: the school's administration. The structure follows the known pattern of the genre: passages of investigation, fights and a large confrontation at the end. What is interesting is the setting; it joins the school film to the action film and does it in earnest. Tom Berenger plays Shale and Ernie Hudson the principal. Diane Venora, Marc Anthony and Raymond Cruz are in the cast. Robert Mandel directed. It did business at the box office and several sequels followed, made directly for video. A familiar choice for anyone who likes the action films of the 1990s. For a viewer looking for realism, the film exaggerates the situation at the school and leaves the solution entirely to violence.