The Lesson

Passing on a somewhat decent idea, the movie unfortunately does not take full advantage of its potential. If you like your torture movie and don't mind or rather cherish low budget movies that look better than the money that has been spent on it, than you are in for a treat. Unfortunately that is a very low bar.

And while I do salute any movie that makes the most of a very tiny and small budget, that does not take away the fact, that it has to be just judged by those merits. Especially if you have so many clichés thrown into the mix. There is gore and there is offensive material aplenty. Don't confuse trying to shock with wit though. Does it try to be witty? Yes. Does it succeed? No. I reckon someone did not do their homework properly ...

Firstly .. this is torture porn! Its not revernge horror/gore, its about the torture..

Now, the movie itself has its ups and downs .. more downs though. The main story is simple .. but obscured by a totally unnecessary sideplot and relationship drama that adds little to nothing.

With that said, in my opinion .. this movie could have benefitted TREMENDOULY from removing this sideplot entirely .. and cutting runtime to a brief 1 hour .. cause i venture to say that the "joy" of the movie comes from the mainplot alone and not some overcoming of an abusive relationship.

So .. the main plot; taking revenge on students that .. by all means .. seem to "deserve it" .. students with no redeeming quality. So far, so good. The problem i had with this movie is that the teacher just wasnt a very good teacher. (speaking from the perspective of being a teacher myself) He certainly came across as idealistic and enthusiastic .. but not a good teacher.

The students on the other hand came across as just a bit "too rude" .. considering the portrait demographic, such behaviour is VERY hard to imagine .. (although i am not familiar with the english demographic that well, but when i compare it to the nordic education, such student behaviour is simply in the realm of fantasy)

There was a lot of blood .. but not that much gore as most scenes that would "show" gore tended to obscure the actual wounding. So you are left with the acting (not too bad). Actually, i liked the performance of all the main cast .. although not too demanding, i would think .. it was still well done.

I cannot quite recommend this movie, because of the utterly boring sideplot that creates long periods of boredom in the movie .. and the rather unsatisfactory ending.

This literally felt like a film school mesh of style and (now) old-school torture porn. Don't get me wrong; the movie was well-made and shot, but it seemed like a bunch of ideas (Look at what I can do!) all edited together with the bulk of Angry Teacher thrown in for the majority of the substance.

Is there a message here? Are there characters that you can stand behind? Can anyone really learn a lesson here? If you answered YES to any of those questions…I'm gonna nail gun you so hard nouns will spill out of your bloody orifice!

And now. For your homework…find a more cohesive movie to watch.

Have read a lot about this film and it's independent, creative,thoughtful persona. Has a docudrama / realist heart , getting down there to the "real"people on the council estates with all these problems (mostly via male emotional betrayal and bullying) that lead to classic alienation from education, culture, love, and playing a positive role in a society (in this film unmentioned in terms of poverty, economic exploitation and inequality). Thus, the effect on the cultured, educated English teacher of these ill cultured crude schoolboys who disrupt and abuse him in his classes is for him to become a vicious, psychotic kidnapper and murderer. And thus rescuing the working class laddo and lassie from their grimness, lifting them into a chocolate box cottage life of Oxbridge culture. Arty rubbish is how I felt watching this mish mash of styles and ideas. This film reminded me of the gymnasium scene from Andersons' "If" where the rebel Mick is beaten into submission and then has to shake the hand of his establishment bully.

This was not executed well enough to be a movie.

The plot is basic, but it got convoluted quick with the flashbacks and torture teaching.

If I remember correctly, one of the students tortured was a decent kid.

The violence is poorly executed.

The whole thing dragged and was pointless.