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Freedom Writers (2007)
Released By: Paramount Pictures   Rating: Not Rated   In Theaters: 1/5/2007
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Studio: Paramount Pictures
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Director: Richard LaGravenese
Language: English
Official Website: http://www.freedomwritersmovie.com/
Theatrical Release: 1/5/2007
Home Video Release: 4/17/2007
Cast: Pat Carroll, Hilary Swank, Rock Anthony, Dre Bowie, Larry Cahn, Jennifer Camacho
Published ID: 493206
UPC: 097361243245, 097363465041, 097361243801, 097361243917,
Plot: Assigned the thankless task of teaching freshman English at a gang-infested Long Beach, CA high school, a 23-year-old teacher resorts to unconventional means of breaking through to her hardened students in director Richard LaGravenese's adaptation of Erin Gruwell's best-seller {-The Freedom Writer's Diaries: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them}. Her students had been written off, and her chances of succeeding scoffed at, but Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) wasn't about to go down without a fight. Long Beach is a place where a new war is waged with each passing day, and when the hardened students who walk those dangerous hallways sense an outsider attempting to understand their plight, their cynical resentment threatens to keep a deadly cycle in motion. Despite the initially hostile reaction she receives in the classroom, Gruwell uses the writings of Anne Frank and {-Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo} to teach her students not only the basis of the English language, but compassion and tolerance as well. Later, when the time comes to tell their own tales in a project specially designed to explore the daily violence that the majority of students have grown numb to, the barriers that had once stood so strong gradually begin to crumble. When the only chance for survival is to befriend the person who was once your mortal enemy, the world is opened to a whole new realm of possibilities. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
IDDateTimeTitleReviewHelpfulVotesTotalVotes
education
Added 2/4/2010

Thank God there is HOME SCHOOLING for kids that can't take that kind of schooling and for dedicated parents who see the need to stay home and teach their own children with the Bible and all the schooling they need to enter Higher Learning.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
Good subject matter plus Arena Football 1 in the film!
Added 1/8/2010

Hilary Swank is pretty good anyway, but
with an Arena Football 1 connection in
here, I had to give it @ least three
stars. Any mention of the sport in the
popular culture is worth picking up on.

Signed, An Arena Football Original,
Rich Salzer, Chicago and Miami

0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
An Unsung Feel Good Movie
Added 12/5/2009

Without trying to sound like Roger Ebert, I am going to keep this review simple. The story is very predictable but who cares, Hillary Swank is on top of her game as a young naive teacher in an inner-city school in LA. She has the forgotten children, warehouse them and hope they drop out before senior year. She bucks the system and realizes that failure is not an option.

She reaches out to the children by having the read "The Diary Of Anne Frank" which shows her kids that they are not alone on feeling like they are victims in an unforgiving world.

You will need a box of kleenex to get through this movie and even though his role is very small, Scott Glenn shines through as Hilary's father who stands behind his daughter and realizes that he too has much to learn from her students.

This movie will make a great stocking stuffer.

0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
Hum Ho
Added 12/2/2009

Place this next to,The Class, a Parisian film with a teacher of literacy with students of not dissimilar disadvantages and issues of racial vilification, and you'll understand that the whole tone of the American product is pitched with a radically varying perspective. Though you might shed the occasional tear for the young student's moments of self-realisation, and feel compassion for the Freedom Writers, there is none of the realism and cathartic whack delivered by its French counterpart. Put simply, in the superior French cinematic experience you don't feel the seperation between actor and audience. In the Californian article, you are aware that Hillary is playing a role, competently enough, but playing nevertheless, when all is done and dusted. Its stylistic pitch is in search of a populist market and consequently reveals the difference between adulthood and adolescence. In this sense, the movie is condescending to whatever audience it has in mind.
0 out of 2 people found this helpful.
Freedom Writers
Added 11/1/2009

Of this movie "Who Magazine" says, "The scripting and performances are taut and intense". Again, about this movie, "Moviehole" states, "A masterful achievement that engages the mind and touches the heart". Two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank stars in this gripping story of inner-city kids raised on drive-by shootings and hard-core attitude-and the teacher who gives them the one thing they need most: a voice of their own. Dropped into the free-fire zone of a school torn by violence and racial tension, teacher Erin Gruwell battles an uncaring system in a fight to make the classroom matter in her students' lives. Now, telling their own stories, and hearing the stories of others, a group of supposedly "unteachable" teens will discover the power of tolerance, reclaim their shattered lives and change their world. With electrifying from its all-star cast, including Golden Globe Award Winner Patrick Dempsey (Grey's Anatomy)and recording star Mario, FREEDOM WRITERS is based on the acclaimed best-seller, THE FREEDOM WRITER DIARY.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
education
Added 2/4/2010

Thank God there is HOME SCHOOLING for kids that can't take that kind of schooling and for dedicated parents who see the need to stay home and teach their own children with the Bible and all the schooling they need to enter Higher Learning.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
Good subject matter plus Arena Football 1 in the film!
Added 1/8/2010

Hilary Swank is pretty good anyway, but
with an Arena Football 1 connection in
here, I had to give it @ least three
stars. Any mention of the sport in the
popular culture is worth picking up on.

Signed, An Arena Football Original,
Rich Salzer, Chicago and Miami

0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
An Unsung Feel Good Movie
Added 12/5/2009

Without trying to sound like Roger Ebert, I am going to keep this review simple. The story is very predictable but who cares, Hillary Swank is on top of her game as a young naive teacher in an inner-city school in LA. She has the forgotten children, warehouse them and hope they drop out before senior year. She bucks the system and realizes that failure is not an option.

She reaches out to the children by having the read "The Diary Of Anne Frank" which shows her kids that they are not alone on feeling like they are victims in an unforgiving world.

You will need a box of kleenex to get through this movie and even though his role is very small, Scott Glenn shines through as Hilary's father who stands behind his daughter and realizes that he too has much to learn from her students.

This movie will make a great stocking stuffer.

0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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