Freedom Writers

MTV Films has found a niche with its inner-city dramas, mixing it up with youth culture in a way that most studio dramas never quite manage. The story of Erin Gruwell, the real-life passionate white, middle-class teacher who gave a voice to her students at an inner-city Los Angeles high school, is a perfect match of subject and studio. Hillary Swank plays the idealistic teacher who encourages her polarized students to find their voice and share their own stories with her and one another, and through offers them the tools (through history and literature) to respect their own potential and imagine a better life for themselves. Writer/director Richard LaGravenese ("Living Out Loud") leans toward melodrama but he tells the stories of the students with compassion and gives them all an articulate voice, and he makes clear that Gruwell's accomplishment came at a personal cost that makes this an isolated triumph in a broken system. April Lee Hernandez and Mario stand out as two of the angry kids who have grown up in a street gang war zone, and Imelda Staunton, Patrick Dempsey, and Scott Glenn co-star.