Current topics in American social media posts (and subsequent censorship) give impression that one of that nation’s greatest problems might be in teachers with problematic behaviour or strange ideas that they want to indoctrinate children with. Problematic teachers, however, existed before but their problems were less exotic, and one example can be found in the protagonist of The Principal, 1987 action drama directed by Christopher Cain. Rick Latimer (played by James Belushi) is a high school teacher who likes to drink and, as a result, tends to get into all kind of trouble, like smashing the car of his ex-wife’s attorney with baseball bat. He gets arrested and such notoriety doesn’t sit well with school authorities. They find ingenious (and apparently cruel) form of punishment by promoting him to principal but insisting that he take office at Brandel High, big underfunded and dilapidated school in rough part of the city where students, mostly black and Latinos, live under the shadow of powerful gangs and spend most of time buying drugs instead of learning. Latimer, however, decides to put the stop to this and announces changes of policy, which puts him at odds at Victor Duncan (played by Michael Wright), pupil who happens the leader of powerful gang and considers new principal unacceptable challenge to his authority. Latimer’s actions get little support from teachers and he has variable degree of success with students. Jake Phillips (played by Louis Gossett, Jr.), veteran head of school security, is the only help Latimer gets, but Phillips believes that he won’t help him in achieving his goal, but merely help him survive the inevitable showdown with Duncan.
The film starts with an interesting and semi-humorous premise of the problematic teacher being the best possible remedy for issues in problematic inner-city school. Unfortunately, Latimer’s drinking and anger management issues are mostly ignored in the rest of the film, thanks to the script by Frank Deese that quickly succumbs to Hollywood school drama cliches. Latimer will start improving affairs in his school not by imposing strict discipline, but by winning hearts and minds of his students and recognising their unfulfilled potential. Latimer’s main foe is teenage drug lord which is played by Michael Wright, imposing black man in his early 30s (later better known for the role of comically incorigible convict Omar White in Oz); possible racial repercussions of that casting is supposed to be prevented by character of rival white gang represented by (equally if not more evil) character of White Zac (played by J. J. Cohen). And another obligatory element of the film is female and relatively young teacher, here played by Rae Dawn Chong, who becomes possible romantic interest and target of sexual intimidation by bad students, here escalating into attempted rape. Those cliches quickly drown any attempt of some kind of social commentary, which is replaced by simplified western-like conflict between noble Latimer and evil Duncan. Certain “woke” scholar many decades later have accused The Principal of promoting White Saviour stereotypes.
Despite oversimplified characterisation and predictabilities of the plot, The Principal is mostly solid film. Cain directs it well, with a lot of emphasis on action, although his sense of pacing leaves much to be desired and the film ends a little bit overlong. The cast is very good, though, especially James Belushi in one of his early starring roles. He handles the character, who starts as obnoxious and thuggish drunk well, and allows the audience to gradually take his side. Michael Wright is quite limited by one-dimensionality of film’s villain, while Rae Dawn Chong and Louis Gossett Jr. work fine within limits of their cliched roles, the latter giving some sort of gravitas and depths to the story. The Principal was greeted poorly by the critics, but it had decent success at the box office. Four years later, Belushi repeated the role of Latimer as supporting character in Canadian science fiction film Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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