Louanne Johnson is an ex-Marine who is hired as a teacher at a High School is a poor area, having recently separated from her husband she really throws herself into the job. After an initial awful reception from the class she uses unconventional methods to teach them, including karate and Bob Dylan lyrics for poetry.
Obviously it doesn’t take long for Louanne to become emotional involved with many of her students and wanting to help them out in life as well as in class. This sees her going to the houses to talk to the parents of the students and giving them rewards for completing work. This includes candy bars and the chance to go to a nice restaurant for dinner. She becomes very passionate about helping the students towards graduating and cannot understand when some of them just drop out of school.
The area the school is in and the places the kids live are very violent and it doesn’t take much for them to be scared for their lives if they do something wrong or get involved in the wrong group of people. This is something we see throughout the film and how some people just aren’t willing to help out at all, not going to spoil one of the main story lines but I will say that I was filling up watching that part.
Thanks to Netflix it was the first time I watched this film last night, but I knew about it because of Gangsters Paradise by Coolio and that song is played at different parts in the film with good effect really. It fits well with the storyline of the film and how it relates to what the kids are having to deal with in life as well.
It just shows though that if a teacher can offer enough time towards students and really help them out how much they can achieve and help themselves as well. If they are always told that they will amount to nothing and aren’t worth anything they will never achieve good things. That was something I liked about this film that it shows that everyone has hope no matter on your background.
I enjoyed Michelle Pfeiffer in this film and thought she really carried it all very well in the title role, showing so much emotion that you cannot help feel sorry for her and want her to succeed in helping the students but also helping herself deal with what is left of her life.
