Susan Granger’s review of “Freedom Writers” (Paramount Pictures)
Based on actual journals of disadvantaged African-American, Latino and Asian students, “Freedom Writers” focuses on these chronicles of ghetto reality, including random shootings and losing friends/family to gunfire.
In 1994, two years after the L.A. riots, when crusading teacher Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank), wearing a string of criticism-provoking pearls, reports to work at forcibly integrated Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, she’s quite ill-equipped to handle the “unteachables.”
Faced with the gang culture, racial prejudice and a sense of hopelessness, she decides to expose these incorrigible underachievers to “The Diary of Anne Frank,” hoping that they will identify with the challenges that Anne faces growing up in a war zone and learn to apply that to their own lives, adding Homer’s “Odyssey,” Elie Weisel’s “Night” and Tupac Shakur’s rap lyrics. Convinced that her urban pupils have something to say, she distributes blank journals, instructing them to express their feelings on paper. Her unorthodox experiment is not only successful but results in turning diversity into cohesiveness.
Screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (“The Bridges of Madison County,” “The Horse Whisperer”) excels at adapting narratives and, as director, he wisely chooses not to concentrate on perpetually-smiling two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank (“Million Dollar Baby,” “Boys Don’t Cry”), her sulking husband (Patrick Dempsey on “Grey’s Anatomy”) or ex-activist father (Scott Glenn). That was the prime pitfall of a similarly themed, idealistic story, “Dangerous Minds,” with Michelle Pfeiffer.
Instead, it’s the kids’ drama that’s front-and-center, particularly when voiced by a scowling Latina, Eva (April Lee Hernandez), who witnessed her boyfriend committing a crime but is conflicted by guilt and the ramifications of testifying against him. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Freedom Writers” is a contrived yet inspirational 7, transforming apathy and anger into creativity.
