Freedom Writers

**.5/****     FREEDOM WRITERS (PG-13)

Every year, movie audiences are bombarded with mediocre offerings from studios hoping to cash-in with their latest naive stories — or as the studios refer to them, “inspirational tales” — about adult influences who manage to break through the proverbial wall and reach the unreachable. But, by avoiding the trite moments that film goers have become accustomed to over the years, Freedom Writers is able to succeed in less conventional ways.

Two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry, Million Dollar Baby) plays ambitious first-year teacher Erin Gruwell, who enters a difficult world at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California where racial tensions remain high two-years following the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The integrated school is divided into four camps where whites, blacks, Latinos and Cambodians are forced to co-exist, but rarely do, in their underpriveleged life.

The daughter of a civil rights activist, Gruwell is able to connect with students after an unexpected discussion about the Holocaust leads the students to open up about their own personal struggles and they begin writing their own journals in resemblance to that of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

Swank does a fine job in her portrayal of Erin Gruwell, although she is simply just the motivational factor for discovering the students who make-up her high school English class. The most notable of which is Eva, played by newcomer April Hernandez, who makes the most life altering choice of any of the students in Gruwell’s class. Hernandez is very convincing in her role as the hardcore Latino who wants something better for herself, but is uncertain as to what kinds of sacrifices she must endure in order to attain her goals.

Several other students’ hardships outside of the classroom are addressed, but are quietly muddied through in order to accomplish the big picture.

Patrick Dempsey (TV’s Grey’s Anatomy, Sweet Home Alabama) plays Gruwell’s neglected husband Scott, while Scott Glenn (The Shipping News, Training Day) is Gruwell’s former activist father Steve. Both are good in their roles, but are so underused that they have very limited importance to the story.

Imelda Staunton (Nanny McPhee, Vera Drake) and John Benjamin Hickey (The Anniversary Party, Infamous) play the film’s villians — two longtime faculty members at Woodrow Wilson High School who do not appreciate and are one of the few who are not flattered by Gruwell’s unorthodox, albeit effective style of teaching.

Yet, it is that unorthodox style of teaching and the unusual way in which Gruwell is able to connect with the students to get them to open up that makes the authentic climax of Freedom Writers something that’s endearing and genuine.