One Eight Seven
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| One Eight Seven | |
|---|---|
 Movie poster for 187 |
|
| Directed by | Kevin Reynolds |
| Produced by | Bruce Davey Stephen McEveety |
| Written by | Scott Yagemann |
| Starring | Samuel L. Jackson John Heard Kelly Rowan |
| Cinematography | Ericson Core |
| Editing by | Stephen Semel |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | August 3, 1997 (U.S. release) |
| Running time | 119 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $23,000,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
One Eight Seven (also known as 187) is a 1997 drama/thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a Los Angeles teacher, John Heard, and Kelly Rowan. The film was directed by Kevin Reynolds and is named for California Penal Code section 187 (murder).
[edit] Plot
Trevor Garfield (Jackson) is a high school science teacher in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. A gangbanger student to whom he had given a failing grade threatens to murder him, writing the number 187 on every page of one of Garfield's textbooks. The administration ignores the threat, and the thug ambushes Garfield in the hallway, stabbing him in the back multiple times with a shiv.
Fifteen months later, Garfield, now a substitute teacher, has relocated to Los Angeles, but the trouble starts again when he becomes a substitute to a rowdy, unruly class of rejects, including a tag crew by the name of Kappin' Off Suckers (K.O.S.). Their leader, Benito "Benny" Chacón (Lobo Sebastian), a menacing felon attending high school as a condition of probation, makes it clear to Garfield that there will be no mutual respect between them.
The tension mounts when a fellow teacher, Ellen Henry (Kelly Rowan), confides that Benny has threatened her life, an action against which the administration of the school refuses to take action, fearing legal threats. Ellen and Garfield develop a close friendship that approaches the beginnings of a relationship, but which is stymied by Garfield's diffident and destabilizing behavior, likely arising from PTSD and his confrontations with K.O.S. Garfield's past also garners him the unwanted admiration of Dave Childress (Heard), a burned-out, alcoholic history teacher who carries and keeps guns at the school.
After Benny murders a rival tagger in cold blood, he inexplicably disappears, and Benny's severely unstable tag partner, Cesar (Clifton Collins Jr.), takes over as class antagonist. The conflict between Garfield and K.O.S. escalates with the killing of Ellen's dog and Cesar's being incapacitated with a drugged arrow and having his finger cut off. A student Garfield has tutored, Rita Karina Arroyave faces continuing abuse from both the K.O.S. and Childress, and drops out. The school administration is depicted as hopelessly mired in bureaucracy and unable to intervene. After Benny is found dead in the Los Angeles River. apparently of a drug overdose, it becomes clear that Garfield, having slowly lost his sanity, has taken justice into his own hands, playing by the rules of the street in an intense contest with Cesar and K.O.S.
The conflict comes to a Pyrrhic end for all involved, as Cesar and the K.O.S. force Garfield into a contest of Russian roulette between Garfield and Cesar, in which Cesar's hard resolve finally breaks. They both are ultimately killed in the contest. Following this, Rita, overcoming her fears and in tribute to Garfield, ultimately graduates and reads an essay about him at commencement. while Ellen, presumably disheartened at the whole episode, apparently leaves the school.
