Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Eddie Waller, Nia Brown Review by Carol Allen
Saoirse Ronan plays schoolteacher Maria, whose class is constantly disrupted by Danny (Eddie Waller). And I mean really disrupted to the near riot in the classroom stage. Reminds me of a particularly difficult teaching practice when I was a student! Things come to a head when Danny injures fellow pupil Pauline (Nia Brown), breaking her arm. Maria visits the boy’s father Josh (Robert Emms) but he’s no help and when Danny attacks her car and she tries to restrain him, she accidentally renders him unconscious. In a fit of panic, she takes him back to her house and accidentally (again) locks him in the cellar. And then she does what any well meaning person in an unconvincing story does, she keeps him prisoner there.
As a result of Danny’s absence, Maria is able to teach her class in peace and they blossom, while she gets top marks as super teacher. There are some interesting scenes between Maria and Danny, as she attempts to continue to teach her prisoner and Waller as Danny, sometimes aggressive, sometimes more pliant, is very good. So too is Nia Brown as Pauline, who first comes over as a smarmy teacher’s pet but then proves to have considerable depths of evil. Visiting Maria’s house she discovers what is going on and goes in for a nice bit of blackmail. She’s very impressive.
Ronan holds all this unlikely nonsense together in a valiantly credible performance. The climax of the story, which seems to be trying to tell us that the “bad apples” are not the Dannys of this world and their disturbing behaviour but a corrupt system and that we as a society are all” “bad apples” for letting them down is frankly an unconvincing over simplification. Worth seeing for the acting though, particularly from the children.
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