Won’t Back Down

Directed by Daniel Barnz

(PG)

**

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This thinly veiled polemic offers proof that “terrific casting and a well-intentioned story don’t add up to a wholehearted cinematic win,” said Claudia Puig in USA Today. Taking a decidedly anti-union stance, the movie “gets points for tackling the thorny problem of public school reform but loses them for glossing over the complexities.” Maggie Gyllenhaal stars as the mother of a dyslexic second-grader who’s suffering under the watch of a seriously lackluster instructor; Viola Davis plays a teacher across the hall who’s willing to become a partner in trying to wrest control over the school from the pernicious bureaucrats at her union local. “As drama, the movie is not entirely ineffective,” said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. Gyllenhaal’s exuberance and Davis’s gravity “harmonize nicely.” But Won’t Back Down “ultimately has no use for nuance,” as the speechifying and ham-handed plot turns of the third act prove. “Though the film’s propagandistic bias is irritating and misleading,” said Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times, “what’s really wrong with this film is how feeble it is” as entertainment.