REVIEW: Maggie Gyllenhaal Is Shrill Heroine In School-Reform Propaganda Film, Won't Back Down

There are few movies that make teaching look more quietly unappealing than Won't Back Down, which is quite an achievement, given its naked aims to inspire. The film, directed by Daniel Barnz (Beastly), who also co-wrote the screenplay with Brin Hill, doesn't by any means hate teachers — it merely holds them to impossible, wild-eyed standards. Inside every classroom instructor, it posits, is a Stand and Deliver-worthy saint who's merely being kept down by those pesky teachers union regulations that are crushing spirits and encouraging them not to try. It's the system that's preventing them from handing out their home numbers so students can call for help. It's the system that's holding them back from staying after school to work with anyone who needs it, and from loving their students even more than the kids' parents do. The film is all for teaching as a calling. What it doesn't do is offer it the dignity of also being a job.
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