User Reviews

Maybe filled with cliches, but worthwhile. Ending was flawed, but probably realistic. Worth watching.

I watched this one day on TBS back when it was first released it followed "The Principal" which is also a very good movie. This movie I would have to say is one of the better school living in a drug filled neighborhood with death all over the place. The ending very well written and filmed. It made the movie worth watching. I wish I had TiVo back in 1998. So if you see it and like it you should recommend it maybe the company will sell it on DVD which made it. IMDb.COM. is a great site. but this movies artwork is wrong, and the link to AMAZON which is an IMDb company is also wrong. Beware I would tell you where to buy it but it may add me to the black list. Anyway I hope this helps you decide whether to see it or not and hopefully amazon adds it, it is very rare to find. Very much overlooked. I am going to purchase and place on a very professional looking light scribed disk along with a self made menu and a nice art worked case TECH is great these days.

One of the requirements for making a realistic movie is that it take both its story and audience seriously. Thicker Than Blood does at least that much, as it explores the relationship between an at-risk boy and the teacher who tries to rescue him from his hellish family.

In this ninety-minute 1998 TNT Originals movie, we meet an idealistic young man named Griffin Byrne (Dan Futterman) who puts off law school to teach at a New York City Catholic Boy's School. There is a problem, though: his Ivy League education is useless here so, for inspiration, he quotes lines from movies like Stand And Deliver. As expected, his unorthodox teaching methods are frowned upon by the school's Headmaster, Father Larkin (Mickey Rourke). But Griffin gets in more trouble when he begins taking a personal interest in one of his students, an artistic young truant named Lee Cortez (Carlo Alban). Boasting to the headmaster that he can get the youth to school every day, Griffin soon makes startling discoveries about his newly-found cause.

For starters, Lee lives in a violent, inner-city tenement with a family that is perilously close to self destruction. Worse, to survive his chaotic home life, the boy has withdrawn into a kind of fantasy world -- a world he creates with magnificent drawings. Griffin knows Lee's sketches are portfolio-quality and could no doubt gain the youth admission to art school. The problem is, he also sees them as a cry for help. Not knowing exactly what to do, he reaches out to his student, only to become entangled in a nightmarish family abuse cycle which undermines his efforts at every turn.

From this point forward, the movie portrays the tenuous bond that grows between student and teacher despite ever-mounting obstacles. For the most part, this is done well and provides some of the film's best moments. It also helps compensate for the occasionally far-fetched story line and for the film's overall tendency to build suspense at the expense of subtlety (halfway through, we're fairly certain of its outcome).

But Thicker Than Blood is still worth watching. For one thing, the film does not patronize us with feel-good answers to the serious questions it poses. Another plus is that the performances are better than average, with Carlo Alban, in particular, emerging as a gifted young actor. He is flawless in the pivotal role of Lee Cortez, a youth who makes us believe that kids really do have noble impulses – and can't always be rescued from them.

In a lot of ways - at least the most important ones - this film takes the whole "teacher saves student" genre and gives it some actual life and intelligence. There's is a certain measure of self-awareness to how the script subverts the old clichés, making sure that it takes the opposite expected approach at key moments. In the end, this doesn't make it more realistic, just more different. At one point, the main character watches a portion of "Stand and Deliver", which is, interestingly, more raw and realistic than this film.

There's a kind of episodic approach to "Thicker Than Blood". It ends up feeling a little bit like an entire television season condensed to a single film. I believe that this takes away from the overall story. We're left without a lot of connecting tissue to keep it together. The emotional crescendo that finally rounds out the film loses some of it's punch because we're robbed of the quiet moments in the getting there.

But there are several good points. Richard Pearce works well with his actors, as he nearly always does. Working within a fairly standard script, he pulls an extra unexpected bit out of them in the process. The actors themselves are believable, which is a plus. Without the on-screen chemistry of Dan Futterman and Carlo Alban, there'd be little else to hold it all together. Alban, especially, has a kind of painful real life quality to him. If this type of story is your sort, it's up there with films like "Up the Down Staircase", "Stand and Deliver" and the "Boston Public" series. If it isn't, you might still get a little something from the experience.

Poorly written with wooden performances by the miscast actors.

I am a teacher, and I believe I have seen every film made in this genre: white teacher tries to go out and save the underprivileged urban children. This is the best of the lot. It is unpretentious and doesn't pretend to have all the answers. Without spoiling the ending, I will say that "Hollywood" would never have allowed it. I think it is a worthwhile film.

Very strong. Saw this a couple years ago but was compelled to submit only now due to the outrageously misleading two line post on main page. This was a tough, extremely well written, realistic piece featuring fine work by Dan Futterman and that rarest of rare these days, an excellent performance from Mickey Rourke as, of all things, a priest. He is remarkably disciplined and convincing for a change. Though it was made for cable this movie (along with HBO's recent "Cheaters") is superior to 95% of the junk that gets dumped into the neighborhood multiplex. A great deal of care and intelligence went into the making of this one. Check it out if you happen to be into that sort of thing.

Ever since I've seen this actor in Birdcage and Shooting Fish, I had to search for more of his work. I came across this VHS tape of Thicker Than Blood. I was taken by another great performance for this actor. It seems he can do anything, and certainly deserves recognition, beyond the likes of a Ben Afleck and his buddy Mark Damon, to name just a few. Mickey Rourke suprised me in a low key performance which reveals also true talent. The ending was predictable and a disappointment, but the movie as a whole was very satisfying. See it for Futterman's performance.

True stories are always invaluable when they are reconstructed on film. The great actuing qualities of both Peter Strauss and Rachel Nicotin add to the convincing authenticity of the story, which must touch the hearts of any viewer, especially parents. There is not much drama here, no violence, only emotional passions, especally on the part of the father, and the general mood of the film is rather languid and soft. The one contrast in the drama is the surprise entrance of the biological father, who makes a rather bizarre supporting figure bordering on the ridiculous, underlining the obvious syndrome of an unnatural mother. The question is how the husband could trust such a mother at all, with her cocaine fallacy and spurious past, and who never told her husband anything, but he still gave her a chance with very interesting consequences.

This is a good movie, a realistic one; does anybody know where I can get the DVD? I will never understand why German TV - journals always write the worst things about this movie (...which is called in Germany "DANGEROUS KIDS-HIGHSCHOOL OF HOPE" - isn't that a stupid name for a film!!). Maybe it is because they don't like to see Mickey Rourke as a clergyman. This is so stupid: Finally, he is an actor, and a good one, at any rate. It is as stupid as if a journal magazine would condemn a movie because Will Smith has a serious part to play. I believe, those writers never really had a look at that film by themselves. - By the way, I liked the end of the movie, although it is sad, because that's the way such things happen in real life.

I guess I am one of the selected few who appreciated the value or message movie was trying to send. I even got a kick out of the choice of Mickey Rourke as the Head 'priest'. I liked the movie and make no apologies!