Stand and Deliver

This remains for me one of the greatest of all movies about teaching. Not interested with showing the violence or horror of the projects, the focus here is on the appraisal and belief in the intellectual minds of teenage students. While we see images of the gangster lifestyle, it is quickly ignored with the focus shifting back to the minds of the teenagers involved in life here. Nearly every scene in this film, in fact, can be directly linked to the exploration or exhibition of the teenage mind. And with that, the film’s point is treated respectfully and has all the more import in its focus.

Jaime Escalante has quit his job in computers, taken a pay cut and followed his dream; teaching high school kids. He is soon nicknamed Kimosabe by students for his passionate and unorthodox approach to teaching as he forces them to believe in themselves for the first time in their lives.

"...Break your neck like a toothpick..."

After taking 18 students from nothing to mathematics whizz kids, he decides to teach them calculus; the mathematical science difficult for even college kids to grasp. After working them into the ground, they decide to sit the National Advanced Placement Calculus Exam, but there are skeptics who don’t believe the kids can pull it off...

More inspiring than the myriad copycats that followed, Stand and Deliver tells a true story and does so well, with intriguing characters and a motivating story all the more amazing because of its incredible truths. Performances are entirely convincing with the animosity portrayed between Edward James Olmos and Lou Diamond Phillips fuelling the ongoing interest of this 99-minute film. While obviously made on a budget, the script here maintains our attention as characters are fully realised and well developed in a real world environment. There is no room for sentimentality here either; Escalante is as harsh as they come, but he magnetises the kids using the tools they are familiar with. Harsh rules and strict guidelines regarding punctuality and work contribute toward motivation, yet even as students attain the next level they are welcomed before immediately being pushed further.

This film stands up well after 15 years. Picture quality is above average for a film this old and while there are a fair share of artefacts, they aren’t obtrusive enough to annoy. There are a few vertical scratches on the original stock (like at 12:08 or 42:51) but again these aren’t huge, just briefly unsightly.

Presented in the original theatrical ratio of 1.85:1 with 16:9 enhancement, the film makes use of a lot of earth tones to portray the dryness of the southern Los Angeles atmosphere. As the colour palette for the transfer appears ever so slightly washed out, this doesn’t affect the film in the least, and could even be said to contribute to the original intentions in that regard. So too with the faint grain that appears occasionally, but this is sporadic and again unaffecting.

With so much emphasis on dialogue or visuals here, there is little requirement for big booming surround sound and so we are given Dolby Digital stereo. This works just fine here and I have no real complaints about the audio content at all. Craig Safan’s score, while suitable to the film, isn’t anything incredibly noteworthy and any sound effects within went by unnoticed and so thereby unremarked upon. The audio is entirely effective for its purposes here, and has been transferred pretty cleanly overall.

Nothing here folks. They stood and delivered themselves out the door before class started and are even now smoking in the boys’ room waiting for metal shop.

This is a gripping story all the more interesting because it really happened. The script is great and performances bring the film into believable reality deprived of any showbiz glamour or sentiment. While being a mostly unassuming film, it is nevertheless quite endearing and well made, reminding us you don’t need to blow things up or crash cars to tell a great story on film. Warner have treated this transfer as well as it requires and deserves, and to this end measures good value.