As this movie came to an end I found myself troubled by it. The movie itself was OK - but really no better than that - and the incident upon which it's based is an interesting one from a number of perspectives. It's the story of how the Academic Decathlon Team of Steinmetz High School in Chicago cheated to win the Illinois State Championship, with the knowledge, encouragement and active participation of their teacher and coach, played by Jeff Daniels. It's a classic "ends justifying the means" kind of story. Everyone involved seemed to portray both the cheating and the cover-up as a noble act, necessitated by their belief that the competition was biased in favour of the perennial champs. Steinmetz was a racially diverse, financially challenged inner city school; their rivals a privileged "white bread" sort of school. To everyone involved in the scam this apparently justified the dishonesty.
That's what I found troubling here. There was never a moment of contrition; never a point when anyone directly involved said simply "this was wrong." Even the kid who finally blew the whistle did so only out of jealousy - because he wasn't getting to share in the limelight of winning. In the end, everyone involved (teacher and students) seemed to do just fine with few serious consequences (the teacher lost his job but ended up opening his own business while most of the students seem to have successfully gone on to university, their experience with the scam becoming an apparently valuable piece of life experience) which perhaps explains one of the closing captions: 80% of high school students admitted to cheating, while 50% thought cheating was OK. I wonder what that portends for the future? Then at the end we're told that one of the School Board officials who condemned cheating was sent to jail later the same year for tax evasion. The apparent message: everyone does it in their own way.
Frankly, it's not a great movie, but it is a troubling one. 5/10
That's what I found troubling here. There was never a moment of contrition; never a point when anyone directly involved said simply "this was wrong." Even the kid who finally blew the whistle did so only out of jealousy - because he wasn't getting to share in the limelight of winning. In the end, everyone involved (teacher and students) seemed to do just fine with few serious consequences (the teacher lost his job but ended up opening his own business while most of the students seem to have successfully gone on to university, their experience with the scam becoming an apparently valuable piece of life experience) which perhaps explains one of the closing captions: 80% of high school students admitted to cheating, while 50% thought cheating was OK. I wonder what that portends for the future? Then at the end we're told that one of the School Board officials who condemned cheating was sent to jail later the same year for tax evasion. The apparent message: everyone does it in their own way.
Frankly, it's not a great movie, but it is a troubling one. 5/10