One Eight Seven

187
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Kevin Reynolds
Written by	Scott Yagemann
Produced by	Bruce Davey Stephen McEveety
Starring	Samuel L. Jackson John Heard Kelly Rowan Clifton Gonzalez Gonzalez
Cinematography	Ericson Core
Edited by	Stephen Semel
Music by	David Darling Michael Stearns
Production company	Icon Productions
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	July 30, 1997 (1997-07-30)
Running time	120 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$20 million
Box office	$5.7 million

One Eight Seven (also known and abbreviated as 187) is a 1997 American crime thriller film directed by Kevin Reynolds. It 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. The film's name comes from the California Penal Code Section 187, which defines murder.

The original screenplay was written in 1995 by Scott Yagemann, a Los Angeles area high school substitute teacher for seven years. He wrote the screenplay after an incident when a violent transfer student had threatened to kill him and his family. Yagemann reported the threat to the authorities and the student was arrested. About a week later, he was called by the district attorney to testify against the student in a court of law, where the student was being prosecuted for stabbing a teacher's aide a year before. This annoyed Yagemann, who had not been told about it beforehand, and led to him writing the screenplay. He claimed that 90% of the film's material is based on incidents that had happened to him and other teachers in real life.^[1][2]

Plot[]

Trevor Garfield (Samuel L Jackson)is a high school science teacher at Roosevelt Whitney High School, a high school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Dennis Broadway (Method Man), a gangster student to whom he had given a failing grade threatens to murder him, writing the number 187 (the California police code for homicide) on every page in a textbook.

Garfield knows that this is a warning and tries to report his concerns to the administration. Garfield realises that Dennis wants to transfer back to his old school but in order to do so he needs to have good grades. The administration ignore Garfield's warning leading to Dennis ambushing Garfield in the school hallway, stabbing him in the back and side abdominal area multiple times with a shiv.

Garfield though badly wounded does in fact survive and fifteen months later he is shown resuming his teaching career but this time as a substitute teacher. He is relocated to John Quincy Adams High School in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, but unfortunately he is assigned to another class of unruly students, including a Chicano tag crew by the name of "Kappin' Off Suckers" (K.O.S.). Their leader, Benito "Benny" Chacón (), a felon attending high school as a condition of probation, makes it clear to Garfield that there will be no mutual respect.

Tension mounts when a fellow teacher, Ellen Henry (Kelly Rowan), confides that Benny has also threatened her life, an action against which the administration of the school refuses to take action as they fear the threat of legal action. After Benny murders a rival tagger in cold blood, he disappears, and Benny's unstable tag partner, César Sanchez (Clifton Collins Jr.) takes over as leader. César embarks on a campaign of intimidation against Garfield which is started by the theft of Garfield's watch (which is a family heirloom). Garfield reports this to the principal who backs away taking any action in case César were to sue the school for defamation.

Ellen and Garfield develop a close friendship that approaches the beginnings of a relationship, but is stymied by Garfield's destabilizing behavior and his confrontational approach to dealing with the K.O.S.. Meanwhile Dave Childress (John Heard, playing the role of an alcoholic dispirited teacher) starts to look into Garfield's past and learns of his earlier assault but rather than report Garfield, he informs him of his admiration while showing him the pistol he carries in the school for defence.

César amps up the conflict between Garfield and the K.O.S. by killing Jack, Ellen's dog. Later after spraying cartoon graffiti depicting a dead dog, César is shot with a syringe filled with morphine attached to the end of an arrow. He passes out, and wakes up to find one of his fingers removed. Upon finding the finger, César finds the letters "R U DUN" ("are you done?") tattooed as a warning.

Later Garfield witnesses a student he is tutoring (Rita Martínez, Karina Arroyave) facing abuse from both the K.O.S. and Childress. Rita later drops out of school. Garfield tries to intervene and approaches the school administration but is met with bureaucracy and is prevented from intervening. Later Benny's dead body is discovered in the Los Angeles River, apparently of a drug overdose. However, it is revealed that Garfield took matters into his own hands, killing Benny and severing César's finger. Ellen uncovers Garfield's spiral into violence and being unable to understand his ferocity, she leaves him.

César and the K.O.S. believe Garfield to be responsible for the murder of Benny and plan to retaliate in kind. César, inspired by the film The Deer Hunter traps Garfield at his home and together with his gang they force Garfield into a contest of Russian roulette with César. César in a machismo mode loads the revolver with two bullets. The gang are shocked at how Garfield doesn't beg for his life but participates without flinching. After each round Garfield talks about the lost-cause lifestyle César has led. Garfield on the penultimate round takes his go and survives, rather than hand the weapon to César, Garfield takes the next turn and the weapon goes off killing Garfield instantly. Driven by his sense of honor and ignoring the protests of his horrified friends, César insists on taking his rightful turn and ends up killing himself. Stevie Littleton () leaves the house distraught at the senseless loss of both lives.

On graduation day, Rita is shown to have completed her studies and graduated along with the now former K.O.S. member Stevie. Rita offers a tribute to Garfield by reading an essay about him. The essay incorporates the theme of the Pyrrhic victory and Ellen leaves the school.

The closing narration cites a 1994 MetLife-Louis Harris Survey stating one in nine teachers has been attacked in school and 95 percent of those attacks were committed by students, as well as the movie being written by a teacher.^[2][3]

Cast[]

Reception[]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 30% based on reviews from 27 critics.^[4]

Roger Ebert rated the film 2 out of 4 stars, complimenting the "strong and sympathetic performance" by Samuel L. Jackson and saying that the movie "has elements that are thoughtful and tough about inner-city schools" but it also contains "elements that belong in a crime thriller or a war movie". He also felt that the movie's "destination doesn't have much to do with how it got there".^[5]

The film grossed $5.7 million domestically in its theatrical release.^[6]

Soundtrack[]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[7]

The film's soundtrack was released under the title Music from the Motion Picture 187 on July 29, 1997 through Atlantic Records. Unlike films like Dangerous Minds and The Substitute that dealt with similar subject matter, this soundtrack did not receive an urban music soundtrack. Instead the soundtrack was made up of trip hop, a combination of hip hop and electronica.

Track listing

See also[]

• List of hood films

References[]

Further reading[]

• Bernstein, Nell. "little monsters." at the Wayback Machine (archived August 18, 2000)(Archive, Alternate URL at the Wayback Machine (archived January 28, 1999), Archive) Salon.com. August 6, 1997. - Review of the film
• Fassett, Deanna L.; Warren, John T. "A Teacher Wrote This Movie": Challenging the Myths of "One Eight Seven" [movie review]. Multicultural Education, v7 n1 p30-33 Fall 1999. ISSN ISSN 1068-3844. ERIC Number: EJ594392 - Information at ERIC

External links[]

• One Eight Seven at IMDb
• One Eight Seven at Box Office Mojo
• One Eight Seven at Rotten Tomatoes
• Interview with Scott Yagemann, the creator