Its action sequences are flawed, and don’t look anywhere as near as cool, and sharp as they could, but 1996’s The Substitute (which spawned three increasingly bad direct-to-video sequels) is packed with familiar faces. The cast is led by Tom Berenger, and includes Raymond Cruz, Luis Guzman, William Forsythe, Rodney, A. Grant, Ernie Hudson, Marc Anthony, Richard Brooks, Diane Venora, Glenn Plummer and Cliff De Young.

Berenger plays Shale. He and his covert ops team have just retired after a disastrous mission in Cuba. But that’s okay because something is going to happen a lot closer to home that will put Shale through his paces. His partner, Jane (Verona), is a teacher in one of the rougher schools in Florida, it’s overrun with violence, drugs, and a dangerous gang, that targets her.

When she’s injured and is unable to work, Chale has his team create some fake documentation, and he goes into the school under the guise of being the substitute teacher filling in for her. His plan is to find those responsible and make them pay, but he’s not ready for what he finds.

He not only begins to realize that he enjoys teaching, but that the gang at work in the school is more of a threat than he thought, and may be using the school resources to funnel drugs through a network, and they have help on the inside.

The film basically descends into a bullet-riddled action flick in the final act, transforming the school into a literal battleground, but there’s some good stuff in the other two-thirds of the film centring around Shale and his classwork.

Berenger is a solid and likable actor, and while he comes across as physically capable in the film, at no point did I truly believe that he and his fellows were former military. And I think that comes down to the way it was shot, the way it was filmed the pacing, and the budget constraints that probably prevented them from doing everything they wanted to do with the film.

It’s not a horrible film, and like I said, it’s cast is jam-packed with people you recognize, it’s just not as good as it could have been. It’s not as good as Berenger deserved it to be, and while the locations and some of the students were real, it just didn’t work as well as it could have.

I personally am glad that Berenger didn’t come back for the sequels, that would have legitimized them more than they deserved (sorry Treat Williams).

It’s a 90s action flick. Definitely not the best the decade had to offer, but I remember it being popular when it came to home video (hence the sequels). I hadn’t seen this one in years, and while some of it still works, it needed tighter shots, stronger editing, and perhaps some better action choreography and shooting.