james belushi plays rick latimer, an alcoholic high-school teacher who gets caught bashing his ex-wife’s divorce attorney’s car with a baseball bat in a parking lot. the school board transfers him to brandel high, a crime-ridden inner-city school known as brand x where expelled students from other districts get dumped. rick is supposed to be the new principal. he is out of his depth from minute one.
the setup is the classic fish-out-of-water: a loud, blundering white guy dropped into a black and latino school full of gang leaders, drug dealers, and kids who have given up on the adults in their lives. the script by frank deese knows this template is tired and gets out of its way fast. rick tries to take charge in his first assembly, declaring no more drugs, no more running, no more being late. victor duncan, the dominant gang leader, derides him in front of the whole school and walks out. the rest of the film is rick earning, or failing to earn, the room.
lou gossett jr. plays jake, the head of security and a brandel alumnus who resents rick’s intrusion at first and becomes his closest ally. rae dawn chong is dr. lloyd, the school counselor who has been doing the actual patient work for years and watches rick fumble his way toward something useful. the supporting cast is mostly non-professional or semi-professional actors pulled from oakland schools, and they carry the film. victor duncan and his crew are not softened for the camera, they are dangerous and funny and bored, the way actual teenagers in impossible situations are.
the climax is a single sustained chase through the school after hours, with rick using a baseball bat and a motorcycle against an armed gang. it is shot and cut like a horror film, all corridors and shadows and one bad decision after another. jake gets locked in a closet. rick hides in the girls’ shower room. victor holds him at gunpoint. the scene works because the film has done the slow work of making you care about every one of these people, including the ones you are supposed to be afraid of.
why it is in the canon
the principal is the rare late-eighties action film about education that does not pretend to have answers. it does not blame the kids, does not romanticize the teacher as a savior, and does not pretend the system can be fixed by one good man. rick latimer is not a good man. he is an alcoholic who attacked a stranger with a baseball bat and got exiled as punishment, and the film is honest about that. the grace at the end of the film is small and earned, not redemptive. belushi’s performance is unusually restrained for him, and gossett’s calm presence gives the whole thing a center.
the criteria blend is loved plus does-something-no-other-film-does. there are other 1987 action films about schools (summer school, three o’clock high, adventures in babysitting), but none of them are trying to do what this one does. it is the only film in the canon that treats inner-city public education as a setting for a siege movie and follows the premise all the way down without flinching.
on hand
dvd.
image: still from The Principal (1987), dir. Christopher Cain, via Letterboxd, baked 0.45