the premise of this movie is , well , pretty far - fetched .
tom berenger plays shale , a mercenary who is temporarily out of work ( those fools at the cia have denied his existence just because he and his buddies botched a job in cuba ) .
fortunately , his girl friend ( diane venora ) , a teacher at christopher columbus high school in miami , gets her knee cap broken by a disgruntled student , creating a job opening for shale as a substitute teacher .
not telling his girl friend , who might object on pedagogical grounds , he creates a number of fake higher degrees for himself ( from yale , harvard , princeton , et al ) and begins his tenure as a high school teacher .
the students ( junkies , drug dealers , gang members , sleazy sluts , ice - pick wielders . . .
you get the picture ) do n't really take to him right away , so he hits one in the face with a can and breaks a few fingers .
this gets their attention to a certain extent , so he tells them the story of the vietnam war : " see , some homeboys from the north tried to muscle in on the turf of the homeboys from the south .
"
oh yeah , now they can dig it ; the problem is just that nobody ever explained it properly before .
but wait !
there are drugs being dealt in the school itself ! and behind the whole scheme , in cahoots with the head gang , the kod ( no , not " cod " , but " knights of destruction " . . .
really ! ) , is none other than .
. .
the upright , ex - cop principal , played by the forgotten ghostbuster , ernie hudson !
so shale does what any good teacher would do .
he gets his buddies together , they gather together a bunch of bazookas and other major weapons , explosives , and cool stuff like that , and they have a big showdown against the drug dealers and kod at the high school .
ok , so
the premise is not just far - fetched , it 's downright dumb . if this were a hong kong action comedy , we might just accept it , but it takes itself far too seriously to be truly fun
.
oh , it has its moments ; how one can truly hate a movie in which huge ( really huge ) amounts of cocaine are delivered in school busses ?
and to be fair , it is almost never really boring , as the action is interrupted by only short sequences of actual story .
but over all , this is pretty much a made - for - tv movie with more ( and bigger ) explosions and more foul language .
in fact , it reminded me of " miami vice " without the production values , babes in skimpy bikinis , and pastels .
if you can sneak into the theater without paying , go for it .
otherwise , wait for video .
the flying inkpot rating system :
* wait for the tv2 broadcast .
*
* a little creaky , but still better than staying at home with gotcha !
*
* * pretty good , bring a friend .
*
*
* * amazing , potent stuff .
*
*
*
* * perfection . see it twice .
pretty far - fetched it takes itself far too seriously to be truly fun the premise is not just far - fetched , it 's downright dumb if you can sneak into the theater without paying , go for it . otherwise , wait for video