Substitute 2: School's Out

Amazon.com

The delicate issue of student discipline becomes dangerously pointed when a vengeance-seeking mercenary (the perennially underrated Treat Williams) sews a couple of tweed patches onto the elbows of his flack jacket and proceeds to add a few chalk outlines to the blackboard jungle. Although the premise of this intermittently entertaining sequel can't match the goofy novelty of the 1996 original, it does sport a couple of effective action scenes (the teacher's demonstration of the yo-yo's history as a lethal weapon is a highlight), and a talented cast (including Broadway star B.D. Wong as a shop teacher who cares a little too much about his tools) that's fully aware of the numerous absurdities depicted herein. An occasionally effective lowbrow action flick that, at the very least, sure beats the heck out of study hall. --Andrew Wright

Customer Reviews:

Substitute 2: School's Out.......2006-07-06

The whole series of Substitutes are excellent movies. Really like Treat Williams in the title roll, but would have loved to see Tom Berenger in more than just the first.

Treat Subs For Tom.......2004-11-25

Treat Williams steps into the role of mercenary-turned-vigilante in Substitiute 2. He plays a guy who's worked with Tom Berenger's character before(or at least has mutual friends). I've always liked Treat Williams. He's one of those actors that's actually very good, yet seems to get thrown into these movies all the time. You'll catch him once in awhile in major motion pictures as a supporting character, but in B flicks he's the star! He seems a little too nice to play the cold hearted mercenary type, but does it well. The plot's similar to the first film in the sense that he goes undercover at a New York high school to find out who killed his brother, get revenge, and take care of his niece. Along the way he brings a fellow merc, teams up with the half crazed Vietnam vet janitor and discovers a chop shop operation going on in the school. Nothing terribly groundbreaking, but it's fun to see Williams slapping up the gang banger students who think he's just some pushover teacher. Good mindless action fun if you like that sort of thing.

SUBSTITUTE 2 Review!.......2004-04-26

As is the case in just about every straight-to-video sequel, the original star is out and a newer somewhat lesser known star is in. Treat Williams does the series justice as a mercenary who fills for his slain brother's history class in a mean Brooklyn high school. It wouldn't be a "Substitute" film if he wasn't kicking and punching his students through the halls with the help of a few unlikely faculty members. Good straight-to-video fare with a decent cast featuring B.D. Wong, Michael Michelle, Eugene Byrd, and a few others but Angel David taking over Raymond Cruz's "Joey Six" role is about easy to believe as Tommy Lee Jones filling in for Billy Dee Williams. Oh wait! Anyways, you get what you pay for.

ALMOST AS GOOD AS THE ORIGINAL.......2003-12-19

ANOTHER MERCENARY [TREAT WILLIAMS] BECOMES A SUBSTITUTE TEACHER AT A SCHOOL IN WHICH CRIME IS RAMPANT. NOT TOO MUCH DIFFERENT FROM THE ORIGINAL, BUT IT'S ALMOST BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL! TREAT WILLIAMS MIGHT NOT BE AS MEAN AS TOM BERENGER WAS, BUT HE'S STILL A PRETTY INTRIGUING ACTOR FOR THE ROLE THAT TOM BERENGER PLAYED. THIS IS DEFINITELY WORTH WATCHING. THE ACTION SCENES ARE PRETTY CLEVER. EVEN FEATURES AN APPEARANCE FROM GURU, WHICH IS THE MC FOR GANG STARR.

A pointless sequel.......2003-10-31

The original "Substitute" starring Tom Berenger and Ernie Hudson was an over-the-top but admittedly clever take on the "tough teacher/tough class" sub-genre started by "Dangerous Minds". Unfortunately, such movies typically spawn mediocre sequels to capitalize on even moderate interest, which leaves us with "Substitute 2: School's Out", starring Treat Williams instead of Berenger.

To say that this movie is unoriginal is an understatement. It more-or-less puts us into the exact same situation as the first film, only done worse than before. When his brother is murdered by a violent street gang called the Brotherhood in a carjacking, mercenary Karl Thomasson (Williams) decides to take on two roles. The first is to take care of his brother's daughter. The second is to become a subtitute teacher for his brother's Brooklyn high school class, which some of the Brotherhood thugs attend. He suspects that the school's auto shop teacher, Warren Drummond, is involved in a car-stripping operation with the Brotherhood and its violent leader, Lil' B. Naturally, it's up to Thomasson to teach the tough class while working to take down Lil' B and Drummond's operation with his mercenary pal Joey 6 and a janitor named Johnny Bartee.

The most dissapointing aspect of this movie is the acting. Before you say, "It's a B movie, so what do you expect?", consider the cast involved in this film. Treat Williams may be a direct-to-video actor for the most part, but considering his number of Emmy nominations and his achievements in "Everwood", you'd expect a little more from him. He simply comes off as too nice a guy to be a hardened merc. Longtime Broadway actor and recent "Law & Order: SVU" cast member B.D. Wong doesn't fare much better as Drummond; he's either over-the-top or very dull. Michael Michelle ("ER") as teacher and love interest Kara Lavelle and Angel David ("The Crow") as Joey 6 are both OK, but wasted for the most part. Daryl Edwards, who plays Johnny Bartee, ends up becoming very annoying in this film. And while rapper Guru (of Gang Starr fame) is one of the most gifted hip-hop lyricists around, he's no actor, and he really embarrasses himself as Lil' B in this movie.

Aside from the weak acting, the movie doesn't really do much with its characters or plot. The relationship between Thomasson and the gang-bangers in his class (one of the better points of the original film) never works at all, especially his attempt to connect to Mase (Eugene Byrd of "8 Mile" fame). At one point, Thomasson throws Mase's stereo out the window because he's playing rap music really loud in class. Mase gets angry and attacks him with a switchblade, but after Thomasson subdues him and leaves him in charge of the class for a moment, Mase later apologizes for what he did. In the space of one class, Mase changes from "I'm-a cut you up real good" to "yeah, I was wrong". Right.

There are other problems, too, including some ridiculously unrealistic action sequences. How does somebody manage to survive an attack by gang-bangers firing automatic weapons at them from BOTH SIDES of a narrow corridor? Beats me, but Thomasson, Joey 6, and Bartee do somehow. Equally bad is the scene where Drummond kills Lavelle by shooting her at point-blank range and then wipes her blood off his hands on a stuffed teddy bear AT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME. Oh, yeah, and I'm still very puzzled as to how they got that laser trick to work on the Brotherhood when laser sources are very easy to spot at any range. The hoods in Brooklyn may not be Ivy League material, but I really didn't think they all have the intelligence levels of rodents.

Customer Reviews:

Suprisingly Effective Berenger Action Movie.......2007-04-13

The Substitute is one of those movies that you fear is going to be horrible, regardless of its potential. But it is actually a very entertaining movie that is a must-see for action movie buffs, and military/paramilitary movie buffs.

Berenger plays a mercenary who leads a team that travels all over the world engaging in clandestine activities. Back home in Florida with his girlfriend, Berenger springs into action when his teacher girlfriend is hurt by a thug at the high school where she teaches. Berenger decides to investigate undercover at the school, and he lands there as a history teacher. He soons finds that his girlfriend's assailant is a gang member helping to deal drugs out of the school. With the help of his team, Berenger works to uncover and smash the drug plot and revenge his girlfriend's assault. Ernie Hudson of Ghostbusters fame is the principal at the school who ends up getting his own mercenaries to protect his interests.

Berenger is not really known for being in action films, but he is very menacing and believable in this role. This is an excellent action film.

A movie worth watching.......2006-04-23

A very good movie, Substitute, brings to the screen the story of a professional mercenary who goes undercover posing as a substitute teacher in an effort to shed light on the kneecapping of his fiancee, a history teacher at a Miami-Dade drug-infested high school, by gang members. What he finds though might be a bit more than he had anticipated...
There is obvious similarity between Substitute and Dangerous Minds starring Michelle Pfeifer (and which was released the previous year) in having teachers in classrooms with unruly students ending up winning them over.
Tom Berenger, Marc Antony (!), Ernie Hudson and the rest of the cast, with the exception of Diane Venora who is not really that great in her role as Jane Hetzko, have truly outdone themselves with their performances, which are outstanding to say the least! All the actors, without exceptions, give it their 100% and it really shows allowing for a highly entertaining movie.
The plot, the setting, and the music are all EXCELLENT.
Overall, it is a movie definitely worth watching, as it will surely provide for an evening's entertainment!

I give it "TWO THUMBS UP".......2005-08-15

Tom Berenger plays Shale a mercenary who left his undercover job in Cuba now he is a undercover high school teacher at Columbus High in Miami wear not the students but other people are running a drug shipment keep the crack even the principal is in on it. Shale even changes his name as he pretends to be a teacher he is now call James Smith.

Dangerous Minds With A Body Count.....And Tom Berenger.......2004-11-21

I like The Substitute. I like those movies where some tough dude walks into a nasty gang ruled school and kicks some butt. The Principal is another good one. It's one of those rare action movies that's very easily direct-to-video material yet managed to get a theatrical release, kinda like Thomas Ian Griffith's Excessive Force. It's a hard movie not to like(unless you're a film snob) because it's one of those movies you wish would really happen. C'mon, it's fun to watch a badass mercenary throw some gang bangers who think they're hot stuff out a second story library window. Makes you wish teachers really could have the authority to pound up troublemakers. Basically this merc poses as a teacher to get revenge for the beating of his girlfriend. Cool enough. Then it gets a little on the unrealistic side as he uncovers a more sinister plot brewing beneath the school. SPOILER AHEAD:(But do you really care? This is a cliche action flick and I'm sure you'll all see this "twist" coming or have seen it done before.) A mercenary out for revenge on a gang is somewhat believable, but the principal running a big scale drug operation out of the school is pushing it a little. That and the fact that dead kids(and teachers) are turning up by the metric ton and the cops don't ever seem to notice. But hey, this is an action film, no need to be that critical. I also get a laugh out of these classroom scenes. You know what I'm talking about: Total chaos. Kids blasting boomboxes, throwing stuff around and telling the teacher to "&@$# off". I've never been to Miami or L.A. Do some schools really look like this? Berenger does a decent job as the hard, take-no-B.S. mercenary. Everyone's favorite latin singer Marc Anthony plays a gang leader, and the always likable Ernie Hudson is cool as the corrupt principal. Hudson can do a good bad guy when he wants to. William "Flatop" Forsythe is always fun to watch and here he's no exception. The Substitute is fun. Sure it wasn't received all that well from the critics upon it's release, but critics don't really tend to watch movies for the sake of simply enjoying them.
Check it out-No message, nothing deep or enlightening here just cheap, schlocky fun(like my ex-girlfriend).

"The Substitute" Review.......2004-04-26

Tom Berenger is the head of a top-secret team of mercernaries, who decides to infiltrate a Miami high school after his girlfriend is beaten up, Nancy Kerrigan style, by one of the students. As it turns out, the school is being run by drug dealers and gang goons who answer to the principal, a former cop who runs a high-grade drug lab out of the basement in the gym. Any movie with Ernie Hudson as an evil high school principal, a wacked-out William Forsythe, and Latin singer Marc Anthony as the juvenile leader of a gang creatively titled the "Kings Of Destruction" can't be all bad, can it? Think of it as "Dangerous Minds" written for Steven Seagal.

Average customer rating:

Substitute 2: School's Out
Treat Subs For Tom
SUBSTITUTE 2 Review!
ALMOST AS GOOD AS THE ORIGINAL
A pointless sequel

The Substitute 2: School's Out
Starring: Treat Williams , Edoardo Ballerini , Christopher Cousins , Chuck Jeffreys , and Susan May Pratt
Director: Steven Pearl
Manufacturer: Live / Artisan
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 0784011664
Release Date: 2001-02-20

Amazon.com

Customer Reviews:

Substitute 2: School's Out.......2006-07-06

The whole series of Substitutes are excellent movies. Really like Treat Williams in the title roll, but would have loved to see Tom Berenger in more than just the first.

Treat Subs For Tom.......2004-11-25

SUBSTITUTE 2 Review!.......2004-04-26

ALMOST AS GOOD AS THE ORIGINAL.......2003-12-19

A pointless sequel.......2003-10-31

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