Dangerous Minds

An ex-marine. A new teacher. A driving, inspirational force. Louanne Johnson. She is new to the world of teaching so when she is assigned a group of smart but tough inner-city students, she finds it rather overwhelming. However she manages to get their attention by coming to school the next day in a leather jacket and teaching them karate; but when she tries reverting to the given curriculum, she is thwarted as the class goes back to its noisy and unconventional state. But determined Louanne doesn’t give up; when the conventional methods fail to teach them anything, she crosses the line. Using candy bars and Bob Dylan she tries to reach out to her students; trying to inspire them, understand them and make them realize their full potential. But she is dealing with dangerous minds…will they let her get across to them or will they just treat her like they treated the others?

Dangerous Minds is a riveting and inspirational movie that I would encourage everybody to watch. Based on the bestselling autobiography ‘My Posse Does Not Do Homework’ by Louanne Johnson and directed by filmmaker John Smith, it is lead by Golden Globe winner Michelle Pfeiffer as Louanne Johnson and a star cast as her class of obnoxious but intelligent students. There are many lessons to be learnt from this movie; it shows you how one can reach into even the toughest looking people because everyone has a mutual enemy- fear; and if you can help conquer that then the person will trust you. But if there is one specific thing that this movie teaches you about, it’s choice. Louanne teaches her students that everyone has a choice. I feel that the most powerful line of the entire film is that “Everyone has a choice. You have a choice; when you are getting on that school bus, you are making a choice. You are choosing to get educated here rather than do what the other people your age are doing- selling drugs, booze, etc. Everyone in this classroom has made that choice. There are no victims present here.” This line changed the thinking of her students and subsequently the audience as well.

Dangerous Minds has an emotional as well as inspirational feel to it and the characters are overflowing with charisma and punk. I agree rules are there to help us but sometimes they just have to be defied.