DVD Release Date:  April 17, 2007
Theatrical Release Date:  January 5, 2007
Rating:  PG-13 (for violent content, some thematic material and language)
Genre:  Drama
Running Time:  123 min.
Director:  Richard LaGravenese
Actors:  Hilary Swank, Patrick Dempsey, April L. Hernandez, Scott Glenn, Mario, Hunter Parrish

Last April’s  "Akeelah and the Bee” told an uplifting story of a young African American pursuing academic achievement. Funded by Starbucks and helped by a few outstanding performances, the movie had all the ingredients to draw viewers young and old, black and white. Nevertheless, two months after its release, “Akeelah and the Bee” had completed its theatrical run, grossing less than $20 million.

This year’s “Freedom Writers” may follow a similar trajectory. It opens on Jan. 5 -- a graveyard slot for troubled films that weren’t good enough to push during the lucrative Christmas/New Year holiday. The studio (in this case, Paramount) can quietly fulfill theatrical obligations before shuffling the title off to its video afterlife.
Don’t let that happen to this film.

Although it doesn’t reach the peaks of “Akeelah and the Bee” in its acting, and goes a bit too far in its sermonizing, “Freedom Writers,” inspired by a true story, is a fine, uplifting tale of an idealistic young woman and the hope she instills in her students.

Hilary Swank stars as Erin Gruwell, a white teacher who takes on a freshman English class in Long Beach, Calif., not long after the L.A. riots. Filled with Asians, Latinos and African Americans, the class is unruly and contemptuous of Gruwell. One student, Eva (April L. Hernandez), explains that white people always want respect that they haven’t earned. “I hate white people,” she says, bluntly.

Gruwell’s students will challenge her repeatedly, but she won’t back down. When one student speaks of the supposed honor associated with ethnic warfare to the point of death -- “When you die for your own, you die with respect,” she says -- Gruwell fights back with language designed to point out the futility of such a view: “When you die, you’re going to rot in the ground. People are going to forget about you.”

Such a view is disturbing from a Christian perspective, and yet it’s correct: Our souls live on, but our bodies decay until the Resurrection. Gruwell, however, isn’t concerned with the hereafter but with the here-and-now, bracingly confronting the mindset that sees racial strife and killings as honorable.

When one student draws a picture with exaggerated features of a black student, Gruwell seizes the moment to make a comparison to Nazi tactics. However, she is shocked to discover that her students are unfamiliar with the Holocaust.