Critic Reviews
41
Metascore
Mixed or Average
positive
2(13%)
mixed
9(60%)
negative
4(27%)
Showing 15 Critic Reviews
70
Genuinely disturbing in its vision of fearless students and powerless teachers locked in struggle.
63
187 offers some thought-provoking ideas and several effective performances, but the script ultimately lets down both the actors and the audience members who are watching them.
50
At the end, I know, Trevor has come unhinged. I accept that and believe it. But it feels like the movie lost the nerve of its original story impulse and sought safety in elements borrowed from thrillers. Its destination doesn't have much to do with how it got there.
50
The movie was written by Scott Yagemann, who taught seven years in the Los Angeles public- school system, and you can feel the rancor and bitterness he still carries.
50
Jackson's performance is impressive: He effectively conveys every nervous and belligerent nuance, but his character eventually disappears beneath a morass of gimmicks, clichés, and political cynicism.
50
Artistically pretentious, thematically fuzzy and almost sinister in its deterministic view of the human condition, this unusually ambitious and serious-minded major studio release is simply too negative in every possible way to find a receptive audience.
50
Blackboard Jungle created this genre (and most of its cliches) more than 40 years ago. 187 doesn't add much more than outrage and resignation. [30 Jul 1997]
50
Though positioned as a glum expose of America's violent schools (a cause for hand-wringing at least as far back as 1955's The Blackboard Jungle), the story is overwhelmed by the throbbing score, music-video aesthetic (New York scenes are shot in cold blues and grays, while the L.A. sequences are a hazy, burnt-out yellow) and the exotic, colorful psychos who rule Garfield's classroom: It's a New York Times editorial by way of CLASS OF 1984.
42
The prospect of a teacher driven to his students’ level of sociopathic vengeance might have packed a ghoulish wallop had the film viewed it as tragic. Reynolds, however, is just grinding out exploitation thrills.
40
A ham-handed melodrama that trivializes an important topic: the role of the teacher in a violent classroom.
