Won't Back Down

Feisty bartender Jamie (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is fed up with the inner-city school that is failing her dyslexic daughter. So she enlists an equally nonplussed teacher, Nona (Viola Davis), to help her take back the hellhole institution and remake it into a scholarly paradise. Loosely inspired by recent cases in California, this shockingly confused feature chugs along for a while as a reasonably diverting pseudo-inspirational melodrama (Davis even gets to do another of her trademark dripping-snot takes). But the film slowly reveals its true colours, pointing a fanatically accusing finger at teachers’ unions while using twisted Obama-esque sloganeering about ‘order’ and ‘hope’ to further its simplistic agenda.