If you’re Asian, Latino, or Black, you can get “blasted” anytime you walk out the door over something as simple as territory, respect or even color. Or for no good reason at all. Its Freshman year, 1994 – during the influential L.A. riots – and Ms. Campbell (Imelda Staunton) runs a school with a poor curriculum of barely keeping these kids alive. Enter Erin Gruwell (Hillary Swank) a Freshman English Teacher whose students give her one week to survive in their classroom-from-hell. Sure we’ve seen this premise before, but not this delivery. Unlike “To Sir With Love” or “Dangerous Minds” writer/director Richard Lagravanese’s “Freedom Writers” takes us on an emotional journey from the moment the very likable and vulnerable Swank enters her classroom to its triumphant ending. We are this nervous teacher, we are these angry students, and soon we feel the transition of Eva (April Hernandez), Marcus (Jason Finn), Jamal (Deance Wyatt) and all the rest. Their world is not white-bread Mean Girls. It’s way beyond that. And (based on a true life story) Ms. Gruwell finds the strangest and most original way to penetrate their anger. While they know Tupac, she wants them to read “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Why? Because the Holocaust can mirror their pain, even if they were Jewish and white. As her students slowly begin writing their own diaries as a means of expressing their pain, you’ll smile, you’ll cheer and you’ll cry – even the men will – so bring a box of tissues. Four tiaras
