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Light It Up

1999, Movie, R, 90 mins

Light It Up: Review

LIGHT IT UP
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Bus the Breakfast Club out of their lily-white suburban neighborhood and into an inner-city hell-hole of a high school, give them something to really worry about --like a tense hostage crisis -- and you've pretty much got the formula behind this so-so social drama that nevertheless gets an A for idealism and effort. Dedicated teacher Mr. Knowles (Judd Nelson -- how's that for stunt casting?) is one of the few good things left about Lincoln High, a dilapidated and overcrowded Queens, NY, high school where security means metal detectors and hall monitors recruited from the NYPD. When Mr. Knowles is suspended, an angry confrontation between students -- lead by Lester Dewitt (Usher) and A-student Stephanie Williams (Rosario Dawson) — suddenly turns violent when one student, Ziggy (Robert Ri'chard), panics and grabs a gun from Officer Dante Jackson (Forest Whitaker). The gun goes off, Jackson is wounded and within minutes Lincoln High is surrounded by police. The school is emptied of everyone but Jackson and his six captors, a mixed-bag of school misfits (including Sara Gilbert, Fredro Starr and Clifton Collins Jr.) soon dubbed the "Lincoln 6" by the descending media. In a film in which Vanessa Williams appears a tough-talking hostage negotiator — complete with blond hair and a thick New Yawk accent — the urban realism that director Craig Bolotin strives for never really takes hold. But Boltin, who also wrote the script, tries just as hard to give his Breakfast Club a higher sense of purpose. Far beyond whining about being misunderstood (though they do that, too) the Lincoln 6 are savvy media manipulators who choose to use their moment to better the lives of their fellow students. It's a bit of 60s idealism wedged in what basically looks like a hip-hop music video, and the film has enough heart to argue that today's "apathetic" youth would indeed stand-up for a cause if they could only be sure someone would bother to listen. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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