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What is it about Jews that so many people hate them? From as far back as the Old Testament, to the weekly ramblings of Pat Buchanan and the fanatical Iranian president, Jews just can't seem to catch a break. What is it they've done that's so bad? They murdered Jesus, did they? And the Romans had nothing to do with that?

Anyway, this is a better film than I expected. Not only does it give us an interesting protagonist, but it allows us to feel like the outsider he is when he arrives at the elite prep school. Regardless of their religion, few people ever get a chance to attend such a ritzy school. Brendan Fraser plays David Green, a working-class Jewish kid who gets a football scholarship to St. Matthews for his senior year. The school is filled with smart and athletic young men destined for Ivy League schools and eventual seats at the head table of our society. The other boys David quickly befriends are played by a who's who of young acting talent just before they became huge stars. Chris O'Donnell, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck are all on display. Matt Damon's Charlie Dillion character is a real jerk. All the guys crack little Jewish jokes here and there, but once Damon learns the new kid's secret. He cranks the Anti-semitism level to really ugly levels.

Luckily for these guys, David Green knows that he has a great chance of getting into Harvard if he just ignores their jokes as long as they don't find out he's a Jew. Green is a tough kid who's had to fight for everything he has, and he could easily beat the snot out of any of them. Once the secret is out, the boys he thought were his new friends suddenly become either indifferent to him, or his enemies. The new girlfriend from a nearby school who adored him also turns her back once she learns his religion. The film could have stopped there and just been a pro-tolerance kind of exercise, but luckily there are other things going on. One of the boys is caught cheating, but the faculty doesn't know who. Unless the boy comes forward, the entire history class will be flunked for breaking the honor code. Green becomes a suspect because he initially hid his religious identity. Will he to take a fall for the guy who cheated?? The film is thoughtful and has interesting characters where it could have just given us closed-minded bigots. Even though we know these guys are ant-Semites, we at least see them as real people with complex problems and motivations of their own. The film boasts some beautiful and realistic locations in most scenes. There are some subplots not fully motivated or fleshed out. What exactly happens to the boy who bolts from his French exam? What became of him after his nervous breakdown? And why did this film feel the need to recylce a gag from the movie Real Genius about putting an intellectual's car inside his dorm room?? Still a very good movie that might make you think twice about cracking ethnic jokes around people you don't know that well. 8 of 10 stars.

The Hound.

A brilliant 'coming-of-age' style film, in the tradition of "Dead Poet's Society". Starring a bevy of familiar faces during their up-and-coming phase: Matt Damon, Brendan Fraser, Chris O'Donnell, Cole Hauser and Amy Locane, this brilliant flick explores the challenges of a young, Jewish hopeful, David Greene (Fraser) who hides his religion from a group of bigots upon entering a prestigious preparatory school. Unaware of his identity, the students welcome him into the fold, until a prejudiced student (Damon) discloses his identity after discovering a romantic friendship developing between his own girlfriend (Amy Locane) and Greene. When one of the students cheats on his final exam - and Greene is accused - the class is requested to deliberate on a verdict, forcing them to choose between their own personal prejudices and the struggle to be impartial. Brilliantly acted and directed. Add this one to your collection!

It's a line the headmaster of the school asks the star quarterback David Greene when he catches him praying at church after curfew but praying in observance of the Jewish new year. Greene's reply to the Headmaster of this Christian Prep Academy is..."mine or yours". This is the essence of the storyline. A Christian Prep Academy in New England is tired of mediocrity in football and losing to their arch rival so they compromise their admission standards by recruiting a brilliant student athlete from Pa. The problem isn't that David Greene doesn't measure up academically, it is that he is Jewish.

Soon after coming to school Greene realizes his classmates disdain and ridicule for Jews. They scorn them and make stereotype remarks that bother Greene but he is determined to fit in. Eventually his classmates and friends discover his secret and this is as far as I go. See the movie and see how David and his friends handle the situation.

Fine performances are put in by Brendan Fraser, as David Greene. You'll be astonished at the youthful talent in the movie as really good performances are put in by Matt Damon, his real life buddy Ben Affleck, Chris O'Donnell, and all the others. I really enjoyed the story, the time setting, and the substance of the message.

Given a scholarship to an exclusive protestant boarding school in desperate need of a star quarterback, a Jewish athlete is instructed to conceal his religion with grave consequences in this drama set during the 1950s. Brendan Fraser provides an earnest turn as the internally conflicted young man in question, however, the movie takes an inordinate amount of time to warm up. The main dynamic driving the film, after all, is how all of Fraser's peers react after inevitably finding out the truth, and yet this does not occur until around halfway in with little else driving the plot. A fascinating subplot involves Zeljko Ivanek as a pedantic French teacher who causes one of Fraser's peers to have a mental breakdown. There are also some memorable dialogue exchanges as the students discuss the pressures and expectations placed upon them. Additionally, there is a curious dynamic at play with the school "using" Fraser for football and Fraser in turn using the school as a platform for college. That said, the vast majority of the film revolves around anti-Semitism, which is unfortunately never quite as interesting as kids cracking under pressure or a school manipulating its students. The anti-Semitism angles is not totally uninteresting though, especially as the boys discuss how few Jews they have actually known and come to realise that a lot of the stereotypes they have come to know might just be stereotypes, but the film could have easily been about so much more. Fraser is really good in any case, and same goes for Matt Damon as the student who most aggressively antagonises him.

I am a huge fan of Fraser, and I own most of his movies. I have always enjoyed School Ties, although I never really appreciated it until I spent my first week in college. Feeling completely different and alone, I put the video in my TV/VCR combo and hermitted for two hours. I may not of faced the harshness that Greene felt, and I was not the victim of some anti-ethnic group, but I was pressured into doing a lot of stuff that I didn't feel comfortable doing, just like Fraser's character. They way he handled it made me realize that I shouldn't give in to anyone....I love you Brendan, you are my hero. Even if it was just a role.

I really liked this one.

There's something romanticized about prep schools in coming-of-age movies, despite their being breeding grounds for insular elitism. Reminds me of "Dead Poets Society"; I wouldn't last a day in these places, but their settings make for memorable movies. In the case of "School Ties", it's anti-Semitism when Brendan Fraser, the star quarterback, is outed and summarily scorned. The irony here is he's the most honorable student in an institution that won't shut up about integrity.

It's a well-written film and features an all-star cast of future stars (capably fronted by Fraser) and it didn't take long to pull me in and keep me invested for the duration. Things become grim in the third act, and with this time period and subject matter, you just know a swastika is going to turn up eventually; it does and it still stings.

The movie seems to telegraph the resolution (and it really got under my skin) but the end pleasantly surprised me. Yeah, it's Hollywood, but it's a quality movie with a compelling story and great performances. Well worth your time.

The performance of Mr. Fraser is incredible he plays his role with a passion and precision I have seldom seen in other actors short of the Jack Nicholson's and Robert De Nero's of the world. It is a story of teenage troubles with "fitting in" and the search for identity mixed with the horrors of prejudice. The film does not get bogged down in useless scenes and dialog to dive home its point. It is an "issue" movie that is subtle enough that you may not even realize it was an "issue" movie until after it is over. The story line never slows down there is always something going on that is both attention grabbing and pertinent to the plots development. Without the use of blatant sex and violence this film showcases the talent of three rising young stars (Chris O'Donnell and Matt Damon also star) as actors, not the big box office stars or teen heartthrobs, that they all went on to become. This is a well written, beautifully directed and phenomenally acted film that anyone can enjoy and relate too.

It was well written, inspiring, revealing, and a reminder that we are still in 2013 only 60 years away from a time of great hatred and prejudice in America. Generations of bigotry are still yet to be undone. We need to create dialog and not make assumptions about any segment of society or pass judgement simply because they are different.

The film begins painting a picture, setting the stage, identifying the key players, there was inciting action, and the pacing was excellent. Moment by moment I was gently lead from one scene to the next, often with great suspense. In the end my own prejudices were re-examined and I began to think not just about anti antisemitism, but other forms of hate speech and discriminatory language that I might not even be aware of.

I also feel that the writers accurately portrayed their point of view with sensitivity and shared a beautiful story with the world . I'd highly recommend.

"School Ties", written by Dick Wolf and Darryl Ponicsan from Wolf's story, seems as if it must be a remake of something (possibly with Sal Mineo or James MacArthur in the lead). Athletic, handsome young man in the mid-1950s, the son of a blue-collar railroad worker in Pennsylvania, receives a scholarship to play football at prestigious boys' prep school in Boston. He's Jewish but keeps his religion under-wraps, and for good reason: the other lads swap anti-Semitic gossip in the locker room (right before the Senior Mixer!) and another boy confidentially tells our hero that one must go along with the curriculum if he wants to succeed. This is the kind of movie that might have been extended from a short; the first hour's set-up is practically irrelevant. The screenwriters lazily stack the deck against Brendan Fraser's well-meaning protagonist, even giving prejudiced-pal Matt Damon a reason to expose the Jew: he stole his girl! The '50s atmosphere is laid on thickly, what with an opening rumble between the ducktails and the bikers in an alley; we aren't even spared the proverbial prank on the snooty French teacher (who caused a student to have the same classroom breakdown that Natalie Wood suffered in "Splendor in the Grass"). It's a ridiculous picture, only notable now for the array of young talent in the cast. ** from ****

I've read the first 30 comments about this movie. Not once did anyone comment on the reasons why Greene (Fraser) never mentioned his religion -- the casual "joking" and "common knowledge" comments heard in the bathroom. Is it any less a matter of prejudice to use the phrase "I jewed him down" than it would be to use the term "kike"? Is telling a derogatory joke about homosexuals any more offensive than calling us "fag"? This is the only movie I can think of right off-hand other than "The Laramie Project" that makes the point that casual speech can be used as a form of maintaining prejudice. For this reason alone, "School Ties" is an important film. As a survivor of a 1964 prep school much like the one in the movie, I can tell you that the scenes and attitudes are accurately presented. I found the characters to be a little one-sided, yes. It's rare to meet any person who is as totally focused and determined as the Greene presented here. Nor is any prejudiced person or group normally so totally open in expression as the "good old boys" we see in this production. But, that's the most impressive way to show the public just how bad it is to be bigoted or to be the target of bigotry. For the production and acting values I'd give this film 6 on a scale of 10. For the "pre-star" status performances of Fraser, O'Donell, Damon, and, yes, even Affleck, I'd give it a 7.5 on a scale of 10. For the message I'd give it 9.5 on that same scale. "School Ties" is a movie that can be enjoyed by anyone who sees it. For "star followers", it has a cool four New Idols in "pre-star" roles to add to their tape collections. For the activists in the world it is a stark and dramatic example of how prevalent unrecognised bigotry is in our society.

Anti-semitism was alive and functioning quite well in America in the 1950s.

Our film takes place in 1955. At the local Roxie Theater, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, "Rebel Without A Cause" is playing. What an appropriate title. In this film, our "rebel," Brendan Fraser, does have a cause.

At first, I laughed. Brendan Fraser playing a young Jewish guy. The laugh is on me. He comes across in a wonderful performance as a typical American young man who happens to be Jewish.

Scouted by an elite Catholic prep school, Fraser takes the challenge by transferring to the Boston school. It is here that we see that anti-semitism is rampant among the supposed elite of the young students attending there. The Jewish people are stereotyped in the usual ways that we have been denounced through the ages. It must be said that Christian people are negatively stereotyped here as well.

Warned by the scout to keep it quiet that he is Jewish, Fraser seems to assimilate among the other students. His winning ways at a football game get him endeared with the rest of the guys.

In fact, he falls for the girl that fellow student Matt Damon likes. Naturally, via a slip it comes out that Fraser is Jewish and he is subjected to the worst torments by the rest of the students. His girlfriend, in addition, now rejects him because her grandmother would turn over in her grave if she ever

she heard that she was dating a Jewish boy.

Here is a school that prides itself on its honor codes. They know full well what is going on. Talk of honor at this bastion of bigotry? This is hypocrisy at its worst.

The film also deals with pressures of student life-getting good grades so as to get into the Ivy League Schools.

As I'm not one of the most optimistic people, for me, the picture ended well. Green (Fraser) tells the headmaster off. "You used me to improve the football team and I will use you to get into Harvard."

He walks off the campus a determined but yet a bitter young man. Great to see a film end like this rather than we all sat down and lived happily ever after. I might be sounding bitter but the theme here is not exactly "Mary Poppins." I liked this film so much because it depicts that upper class Americans went to church and then practiced hatred for the rest of the week. May I also state that Matt Damon is terrific in a supporting role as a bigot. He conveys the twisted and tormented hate that is so anti-American as well as anti-human. It's sad that the Oscar-winning film "Gentleman's Agreement" conveyed this in 1947. The unrelenting hatred goes on and on.

Great drama with even greater performances from the relatively young and unknown cast. Especially Brendan Fraser's acting is really intense. One of his first roles, and in my opinion his best. He was not yet as famous as he is now ( after, for example, a film as 'the Mummy' ), but I think that his acting never had the intensity and credibility of that part.(In fact, I was shocked when I discovered that it was in fact Fraser in the horrible " George of the jungle' ! How could a fine actor like him accept such a terrible role ? ) Also Matt Damon (also an unknown actor at that time )and the other young actors are great. A terrific, subtle drama !

9 out of 10 !

I was at (3) elite Prep Schools at the same time: 1958 -1965 beginning in 7th grade. There were Jewish kids at the schools and a few black kids. I don't buy all the discrimination whatsoever - there wasn't any.

Funny, at one school I went to we recruited an ethnic Catholic kid and we were a Protestant School. That kid eventually played in the NFL. No problems at all.

Another school I went to was the best football team in the state and the stars were mostly Jewish and no one thought anything of it.

So, be careful when you watch what B.S. lines Hollywood wants to feed you. They mostly voted for Obama who has shown himself as a total racist 100% of the time after promising "healing". What a liar.

I grew up in a New England town with a very famous private school, a feeder for Harvard. My mother tried (pre- Civil Rights Act of 1966) enrolling me in this school. The admisssions committee told her "the Jewish quota is filled" and turned her down. The "quota" was a quota of one. It was filled by my best friend, who literally became the token Jew at this private prep school. He went to Harvard, and was by far the smartest boy in his graduating class.

The prejudice displayed in this film is watered down compared to what was happening in real life, and which still happen. The script is not "lame". It reflects the reality as it existed, and still exists in some quarters of the U.S. today against Jews, having witnessed this both as a child, and as an adult.

David Green (Brendan Fraser) is a star quarterback from working class Scranton, Pennsylvania in the 50's. He's Jewish and gets into fights for that. He gets a scholarship to an exclusive prep school for the senior year aiming to get into Harvard. His coach suggests keeping his Jewish heritage a secret. He is befriended by nice roommate Chris Reece (Chris O'Donnell), Charlie Dillon (Matt Damon) who wants to be the quarterback, Jack Connors (Cole Hauser) and others. After winning a big game, he falls for Sally Wheeler (Amy Locane) whom Dillon also likes. Dillon is embarrassed on the field. He discovers Green's Jewish heritage and unleashes anti-semantic feelings among the students.

Something bugged me throughout this movie. They're supposed to be high school seniors but everybody looks like they're twentysomethings. It's standard Hollywood operating procedure and I won't nick it too much. It's very earnest in its portrayal of racism. O'Donnell is the one who has to play the middle. It's all very standard but then there is a great "Twelve Angry Men" section. I really like that scene. It allows the characters to have deep interactions. It's a great scene and makes this standard movie something better.