#214: The Substitute

Release Date: April 19th, 1996

Format: Streaming (The Roku Channel)

Written by: Roy Frumkes, Alan Ormsby, and Rocco Simonelli

Directed by: Robert Mandel

2 Stars

Is The Substitute a racist white savior tale? Or is it simply a mediocre crime flick? Maybe it’s a crude exploitation movie? 

Must I choose?

How one categorizes The Substitute will most likely determine how much fun they’ll have with it. I lean towards regarding it as an exploitation movie. Maybe that’s being too generous, but it makes the movie a whole lot more fun. In fact, it’s the only way to make the movie bearable. 

Take the opening scenes for example. Set in mid-’90s inner city Miami, the teachers at Columbus High School are shown being spit on, threatened with guns, and mugged in the street. When military veteran Jon Shale (Tom Berenger) goes undercover as a substitute teacher, he uncovers corruption and gang violence that leads all the way up to the school’s administration. 

How to solve the violence and save the kids?

Kick some ass, obviously.

It’s a ridiculous movie. You’ve got Marc Anthony playing a high school gang leader, selling cocaine by the school bus load. You’ve got Ernie Hundson playing the corrupt school Principal, executing a nosy teacher gangsta-style in the school gymnasium. And you’ve got the aforementioned Tom Berenger going by the alias Mr. Smith, teaching kids in the classroom one moment, getting into shootouts with gangsters in the school library the next.

Sure, there is an argument that this is a despicable, racist movie. The students are shown as gross caricatures, that is until they are saved by the paternalistic Mr. Smith. The Substitute is part of a laundry list of white savior movies from the ‘90s, where brown and black kids were depicted by white filmmakers as nearly hopeless and almost completely without agency. And for many minority actors during that time, this was the only type of role available to them. That’s unfortunate, and Hollywood is still reckoning with its role in the portrayal and representation of race today. 

But now that we’re coming up on 30 years since The Substitute’s release, I say (as a white dude, it should be noted) that we can safely relegate it to exploitation status. Laugh at it. Shake your head. Make jokes that people went to the theaters unironically to watch this back in the day.

Isn’t it nice how far we’ve progressed as a society?

We’ve come a long ways, right? Right?