Freedom Writers- Movie Review “Freedom Writers" has a great advantage over all those other idealistic and somewhat naïve teachers who come to inner city schools and initially face setbacks but persevere and eventually gain the students' interest and teach them to achieve far beyond the expectations of society movies. Hilary Swank who stars as Erin Gruwell is an idealistic and somewhat naive new teacher who wears pearls and too-short skirts and is convinced she can help her low-achieving inner-city students. These kids though "kids" is the wrong word considering the advanced age of most of the actors live the worst lives possible in America. Every single one in the class of high school freshmen had a friend who has been killed, and most know more than one. Every single one (except the white kid) has been shot at. None of them (except the white kid) has ever heard of the Holocaust. The popular movie, Freedom Writers, is based on the true story of a Long Beach (CA) teacher who mentors a group of students following the LA riots of 1990. The teacher, Erin Gruwell, finds herself hated by her ethnically diverse "gangbanging" students (LaGravenese). Through writing, both Gruwell and her students work through one of the most tumultuous times of racial tension in the United States since the 1960s (Gruwell).
In other words, the movie is indulging in a little hard-knock overkill. Every one of these 14-year-olds has been shot at? For a film that preaches that teachers should not talk down to their students, "Freedom Writers" kind of talks down a little to its audience (Tyler). At first, Erin suffers setbacks. The students ignore her and are unruly. Most stop coming to class. And all of them whine that she does not know anything about their lives, she cannot understand them and she's fooling herself if she thinks she can teach them. But Erin is creative in her ways of reaching out to them. What is more, she believes in them in a way that no one else in their lives ever has. The other teachers think little of them, as exemplified by a school administrator played by Imelda Staunton in a marvelously