Thicker Than Blood

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.

Maybe filled with cliches, but worthwhile. Ending was flawed, but probably realistic. Worth watching.

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.

One of the requirements for making a realistic movie is that it take both its story and audience seriously. Thicker Than Blood does at least that much, as it explores the relationship between an at-risk boy and the teacher who tries to rescue him from his hellish family.

In this ninety-minute 1998 TNT Originals movie, we meet an idealistic young man named Griffin Byrne (Dan Futterman) who puts off law school to teach at a New York City Catholic Boy's School. There is a problem, though: his Ivy League education is useless here so, for inspiration, he quotes lines from movies like Stand And Deliver. As expected, his unorthodox teaching methods are frowned upon by the school's Headmaster, Father Larkin (Mickey Rourke). But Griffin gets in more trouble when he begins taking a personal interest in one of his students, an artistic young truant named Lee Cortez (Carlo Alban). Boasting to the headmaster that he can get the youth to school every day, Griffin soon makes startling discoveries about his newly-found cause.

For starters, Lee lives in a violent, inner-city tenement with a family that is perilously close to self destruction. Worse, to survive his chaotic home life, the boy has withdrawn into a kind of fantasy world -- a world he creates with magnificent drawings. Griffin knows Lee's sketches are portfolio-quality and could no doubt gain the youth admission to art school. The problem is, he also sees them as a cry for help. Not knowing exactly what to do, he reaches out to his student, only to become entangled in a nightmarish family abuse cycle which undermines his efforts at every turn.

From this point forward, the movie portrays the tenuous bond that grows between student and teacher despite ever-mounting obstacles. For the most part, this is done well and provides some of the film's best moments. It also helps compensate for the occasionally far-fetched story line and for the film's overall tendency to build suspense at the expense of subtlety (halfway through, we're fairly certain of its outcome).

But Thicker Than Blood is still worth watching. For one thing, the film does not patronize us with feel-good answers to the serious questions it poses. Another plus is that the performances are better than average, with Carlo Alban, in particular, emerging as a gifted young actor. He is flawless in the pivotal role of Lee Cortez, a youth who makes us believe that kids really do have noble impulses – and can't always be rescued from them.

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.