Sans issue

True stories are always invaluable when they are reconstructed on film. The great actuing qualities of both Peter Strauss and Rachel Nicotin add to the convincing authenticity of the story, which must touch the hearts of any viewer, especially parents. There is not much drama here, no violence, only emotional passions, especally on the part of the father, and the general mood of the film is rather languid and soft. The one contrast in the drama is the surprise entrance of the biological father, who makes a rather bizarre supporting figure bordering on the ridiculous, underlining the obvious syndrome of an unnatural mother. The question is how the husband could trust such a mother at all, with her cocaine fallacy and spurious past, and who never told her husband anything, but he still gave her a chance with very interesting consequences.

I guess I am one of the selected few who appreciated the value or message movie was trying to send. I even got a kick out of the choice of Mickey Rourke as the Head 'priest'. I liked the movie and make no apologies!

I watched this one day on TBS back when it was first released it followed "The Principal" which is also a very good movie. This movie I would have to say is one of the better school living in a drug filled neighborhood with death all over the place. The ending very well written and filmed. It made the movie worth watching. I wish I had TiVo back in 1998. So if you see it and like it you should recommend it maybe the company will sell it on DVD which made it. IMDb.COM. is a great site. but this movies artwork is wrong, and the link to AMAZON which is an IMDb company is also wrong. Beware I would tell you where to buy it but it may add me to the black list. Anyway I hope this helps you decide whether to see it or not and hopefully amazon adds it, it is very rare to find. Very much overlooked. I am going to purchase and place on a very professional looking light scribed disk along with a self made menu and a nice art worked case TECH is great these days.

In a lot of ways - at least the most important ones - this film takes the whole "teacher saves student" genre and gives it some actual life and intelligence. There's is a certain measure of self-awareness to how the script subverts the old clichés, making sure that it takes the opposite expected approach at key moments. In the end, this doesn't make it more realistic, just more different. At one point, the main character watches a portion of "Stand and Deliver", which is, interestingly, more raw and realistic than this film.

There's a kind of episodic approach to "Thicker Than Blood". It ends up feeling a little bit like an entire television season condensed to a single film. I believe that this takes away from the overall story. We're left without a lot of connecting tissue to keep it together. The emotional crescendo that finally rounds out the film loses some of it's punch because we're robbed of the quiet moments in the getting there.

But there are several good points. Richard Pearce works well with his actors, as he nearly always does. Working within a fairly standard script, he pulls an extra unexpected bit out of them in the process. The actors themselves are believable, which is a plus. Without the on-screen chemistry of Dan Futterman and Carlo Alban, there'd be little else to hold it all together. Alban, especially, has a kind of painful real life quality to him. If this type of story is your sort, it's up there with films like "Up the Down Staircase", "Stand and Deliver" and the "Boston Public" series. If it isn't, you might still get a little something from the experience.

This is a good movie, a realistic one; does anybody know where I can get the DVD? I will never understand why German TV - journals always write the worst things about this movie (...which is called in Germany "DANGEROUS KIDS-HIGHSCHOOL OF HOPE" - isn't that a stupid name for a film!!). Maybe it is because they don't like to see Mickey Rourke as a clergyman. This is so stupid: Finally, he is an actor, and a good one, at any rate. It is as stupid as if a journal magazine would condemn a movie because Will Smith has a serious part to play. I believe, those writers never really had a look at that film by themselves. - By the way, I liked the end of the movie, although it is sad, because that's the way such things happen in real life.