I am normally not a big fan of the "new teacher/principal comes to an urban warzone school and inspires dramatic change" movies. They usually just come off as sappy and overly melodramatic to me.
Stand and Deliver is different. New teacher Jaime Escalante comes into Garfield High, an East LA high school with the usual bad reputation and overwhelmingly bad odds for the students who do care, and sees potential. This was a much more powerful film than others of its type, because this was a much more personal, compartmentalized story. Escalante wasn't trying to change the entire school, just "his kids." He saw that these kids were never given anything, let alone a break, and did something extraordinary for them: he pushed them to succeed. He handed them nothing, worked them hard, and the class flourished. The class went from perpetual dropouts to succeeding at the highest level of math available to them: Advanced Placement Calculus. This movie struck me more than the others because it
was on a more personal level. It showed what one teacher can accomplish with one class of motivated students, no matter their situations.
Edward James Olmos stars as Jaime Escalante. His portrayal is extremely powerful and subtle at the same time. You watch him and think that he actually cares about those students; wait, the actors playing the students. Lou Diamond Phillips plays at-risk gang banger Angel Guzman. He also delivers a standout performance as an underachieving student torn between his life as a student and the one as a thug. All of the performances in this are wonderful, and we see what circumstances these kids faced in their lives that affected their commitment to school.
Stand and Deliver does just that. Delivering an inspiring story with a great script and even better acting, this is one of the best non-sports, underdog movies I've seen. Watch it and be inspired yourself. 9/10.
See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!
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