The Substitute 2 1998, Rated R

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I equate my screening this film to being in front of a huge desert bar at a glamorous party at the Playboy Mansion. You know that eating nine platefuls of cheesecake will be bad for you, but nevertheless, you take nine platefuls of cheesecake, and then go back for some brownies and key lime pie; there are some things you just can't resist, no matter how bad you know they will be for you. A similar phenomenon occurred when I chose to screen Dennis Rodman's motion picture debut, Double Team.

The original The Substitute, starring Tom Berenger, was rather formulaic. It had a pretty intriguing premise: a mercenary substitutes at an inner city high school to extract revenge on the punks that got fresh with his girlfriend, but the film went downhill from there. The 25 word pitch of The Substitute 2 is quite similar. Treat Williams stars as Randall Thomasson, another mercenary with a loved one teaching in an inner city high school. When Williams' brother is killed by gang-bangers, Williams steps up to bat. Or more accurately, Williams steps up to kick the ever loving crap out of the students in his classes. Like the original, there is also a rather inconceivable sub-plot interwoven with the delicate tapestry of Williams' desire for revenge; this time B.D. Wong, the school's autobody teacher, is running a chop shop out of his classroom.

The biggest problem with The Substitute 2 comes with its lack of realism. I understand that in the context of a plot involving hired killers teaching at high schools, concerns about realism tend to be thrown out the window, but, in this case, this was a trait that just couldn't be overlooked. At first there were little things, like the fact that Williams allowed his niece to continue attending school at the institution where he was, ahem, teaching. Then there were the bigger things, like the fact that the school's janitor had a fully functional weapons arsenal in the school's basement and made a practice of crawling through the school's ventilation ducts to spy on people in hallways and classrooms. Then there were the really, really big things, like the fact that on Williams' first day of, ahem, teaching he was the intended victim of a drive-by. Being a white guy in a bad neighborhood does not instantly necessitate being the recipient of random gunfire.

Williams portrayal of Thomasson was fairly solid, but the suspect nature of the plot, writers Roy Frumkes and Rocco Simonelli's desire to kill off as many of the main characters as possible in a short period of time, and director Steven Pearl's lack of focus on establishing one particularly evil mastermind made this film quite choppy. There are a large number of other films that will prove to be far more enjoyable than The Substitute 2.