
Sindy, living in a refugee camp, saw this place as a prison, not a home. Moreover, as already mentioned, girls differ from each other in several aspects. Being in different gangs, the girls see each other as rivals and enemies, which is manifested in their quarrels and disagreements. Sindy is a gang member, which leads to a conflict with her classmate Eva. Certainly, her childhood cannot be called happy, and it affects the character of the young women. At an early age, Sindy witnessed such a terrible event as war, during which she was forced to live in a refugee camp.
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Just like Eva, Sindy Ngon had a difficult and traumatic childhood, full of violence and sadness. On the other hand, Eva sees such a life as normal and believes that she does not deserve anything better. Seeing the same cruelty and violence from an early age, some of her classmates realize that such a life does not suit them, and they are its hostages. These differences consist in her acceptance and non-resistance of this cruel fate. However, in some ways, she differs from her classmates, and particularly from Sindy. Like her father, she becomes a member of a gang, skips school, and commits various illegal actions. In the past, her father was a gang member and a prisoner, which certainly left its mark on the character of the girl. Other glancing though effective performances come from Jason Finn as a young man living on the street, Grammy-nominated Mario as a teen coping with his brother’s travails in the legal system, Hunter Parrish as a white youth ostracized from all camps and Jaclyn Ngan as a Cambodian survivor of a refugee camp.Eva Benitez is portrayed as a rude and short-tempered girl who constantly gets into fights and makes bad decisions. Yet her dilemma - as a Latina caught up in gang culture who faces a moral decision about testifying in court against one of “her own” - is the on-and-off central thread of the film. Indeed, the film starts off as if she were the central figure before the focus shifts to her teacher, then fragments into a classwide diffusion. The key student is Eva, played by April Lee Hernandez with a bitter scowl darkening her strikingly beautiful face.

Strangely but presumably to maintain a PG-13 rating, the film never touches on the teens’ sexual activity. Only in the margins do the students share their lives with viewers - abuse, broken homes, drive-bys, drugs and racism are everyday challenges. Before you know it, her class is one big rainbow coalition/summer camp love-in. She turns a racist classroom drawing into a brilliant teaching aid and instinctively realizes that reading “The Diary of Anne Frank” will hugely impact her students’ outlooks. Remarkably, she quickly turns into a savvy teacher with seemingly years of experience. Brimming with self-confidence over her lesson plans and holding a concept of inner-city youths that can charitably be called naive, Erin is shocked by the blatant disrespect, racism and hostility exhibited by her students. The Swank imprimatur might boost the urban drama’s box office potential into the $25 million-$30 million range, which considering its modest budget would be a success.Īccording to this movie, written and directed by Richard LaGravenese, Erin Gruwell (Swank) comes to Wilson High School after the Rodney King riots, much like Alice the day she fell down that rabbit hole. Never once do you see the iron in the character that enables her to cope and connect with such challenging students. No teacher in America could possibly smile this often. The film does boast inspired moments and fine performances from its young actors, but Swank marches through the story with a curiously inappropriate grin on her face. On the other, there are these students starting to make connections between their lives and the lives of others through introspective writing. On one hand, this is a Hilary Swank vehicle with undue focus on the mundane problems - at least compared to the high drama in her students’ lives - of a neophyte teacher.
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So the Hollywood development process has produced a movie at war with itself.

But it ill serves the original material, a published collection of journal entries by at-risk students written over several years that explain and explore their lives, fears and aspirations. Swank stars in the new film "Freedom Writers." REUTERS/Dave Gatleyīecause the film is based on a real-life high school English class in Long Beach, Calif., whose teacher is played by two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, this undoubtedly was a foolproof way to get a commercially risky subject developed and greenlighted. In this file photo actress Hilary Swank attends a news conference at the 2006 Comic-Con Convention in San Diego, California July 21, 2006.
