Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
When a Brooklyn high school student writes the police code for homicide, 187, inside a textbook owned by teacher Trevor Garfield, Garfield feels threatened. The principal dismisses the incident, but the same student stabs Trevor soon after. Fifteen months later, a physically and emotionally scarred Trevor relocates to California and takes up substitute teaching. To his dismay, his new school is as full of dangerously undisciplined students as his old one—including four Latin Americans and a European American claiming membership in tagging gang K.O.S. (Kappin' Off Suckers)—driving him over the edge.
One Eight Seven is a gritty, largely forgotten thriller that earns its modest reputation on the strength of Samuel L. Jackson's intense, committed performance as the traumatized teacher Trevor Garfield — it's among his more underrated dramatic turns, anchoring a film that could easily have slipped into exploitation territory. The plot is serviceable but somewhat predictable in its escalation toward vigilantism, treading familiar 'dangerous classroom' ground established by films like Dangerous Minds and The Substitute. The cinematography is competent and appropriately grungy without being especially distinctive. The ending, while darkly bold in concept, lands with more shock value than genuine catharsis, feeling slightly unearned. Novelty sits in the middle — it takes a harder, more morally ambiguous edge than most teacher-vs-students films of the era, but doesn't fully transcend its genre roots.