One Eight Seven (1997) on Netflix
Dennis Broadway writes 187 in a textbook after a failing grade, and Brooklyn teacher Trevor Garfield reports the threat. Dennis stabs him. Fifteen months later Trevor teaches in California.
- Netflix2.4/5
- IMDb6.6/1027,282 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes31%
Trailer
Plot summary
Trevor Garfield teaches science at a Brooklyn high school, where he gives Dennis Broadway a failing grade. Dennis writes 187, the police code for homicide, on page after page of a textbook and threatens to murder him. Trevor tells the administration, which ignores his warning, and Dennis ambushes him in a hallway with a shiv. Trevor survives and, fifteen months later, moves to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles to work as a substitute teacher. His new class includes a Chicano tag crew called Kappin' Off Suckers, whose leader, Benny Chacón, is a felon ordered to attend high school as a condition of his probation. Benny makes clear there will be no mutual respect. Another teacher, Ellen Henry, tells Trevor that Benny has threatened her life, and the administration refuses to act out of fear of legal action.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about One Eight Seven (1997)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Scott Yagemann, a Los Angeles high school substitute teacher for seven years, wrote the screenplay after a violent transfer student threatened to kill him and his family; the student was arrested and a week later Yagemann was called to testify against him, the student being prosecuted for stabbing a teacher's aide a year before.
- One Eight Seven, directed by Kevin Reynolds, was the first top-billed starring role for Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a Los Angeles teacher caught with gang trouble in an urban high school.
- Unlike similar films such as Dangerous Minds and The Substitute, the soundtrack for One Eight Seven was not an urban music soundtrack but trip hop, a combination of hip hop and electronica.
- The Miles Davis song Blue in Green plays over the scene in which Samuel L. Jackson's Trevor Garfield invites fellow teacher Ellen Henry, played by Kelly Rowan, to his house, but the song is not on the soundtrack.
