I need teachers who love movies to watch this one & critique. I couldn’t get past the problem of location. If this story was loosely based on California schools, then why was the story set in Pennsylvania where the local school system is probably dramatically different. The opening scene says it all: a teacher is playing with her cell phone and has her computer opened to a boots/shoes shopping page clearly impatient with a child struggling to read. Everything is grainy as if we were watching The Wire. There are huge holes in the storyline. A teacher’s relationship is dissolving because….reasons! Her son can’t read because his mother is a teacher, and she is pushing him too much. There is a kind of sensational explanation at the end, but too little, too late. Unlike Blackboard Jungle (1955), Stand and Deliver (1988), Lean On Me (1989), Dangerous Minds (1995) or Music of the Heart (1999), the focus of Won’t Back Down isn’t between the teacher and student, but the teachers and the parents, and the energizing force isn’t the aforementioned beleaguered teacher, but the plucky and determined single mother who inspires the teacher. It doesn’t quite work. For a movie about doing everything for the kids,the parents largely ignore their kids as they scream at the school for not doing more. I’m not saying that it isn’t reasonable to work all day, fight for your kids education and meet with teachers and parents, but how much time do we actually focus on the kids when they aren’t largely awful until the end. Other than their difficulties with reading, what do the kids like to do? The audience does not get to know them as real people. So a new genre mashup, the pioneering parent and inspirational teacher, does not work because the object of their affection is just that: an object. Also after the initial 45 minutes, Won’t Back Down becomes a monotonous false dichotomy: are we doing it for the money (unions) or for the kids? There is one answer to that: the kids–you know, the ones who aren’t developed as real characters with real relationships, hobbies, joys. Also Won’t Back Down seems to suggest that even with a union, because of politics, the inspirational teacher can be dismissed fairly unceremoniously. I didn’t buy that storyline, or that teachers would jettison what little protection they get from a union to teach what they want. Also teaching what you want sounds great in theory, but suppose you think that a good skill is discus throwing? It is a movie. Not dealing with the nuances of problems within the education system in a movie would be forgivable if the disparate story lines worked: failure in relationships, new love interests, bureaucrats who decide to abandon their posts to resume teaching, bureaucrats who remain entrenched. The cast is shockingly amazing: Maggie Gyllenhaal, whom I loved since Secretary; Viola Davis, who made The Help tolerable; Holly Hunter, whom I loved in Copycat (hey, Sigourney), Rosie Perez and Bill Nunn, aka Radio Raheem, from Do The Right Thing, Marianne Jean-Baptiste from Secrets and Lies, and Lance Reddick from The Wire and Fringe. What a waste! None of them are able to keep the balloon aloft since it was weighted down by MESSAGE (reference to Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood). Won’t Back Down is like a soufflé that never rises: no matter how great the ingredients are, if it is flat, it doesn’t work.