Summary
It is an action-packed look into an undercover cop using his skills to help teens avoid drug addiction.
We review the Netflix film Lesson Plan, which does not contain spoilers.
Netflix has had a string of action films with compelling stories, and Lesson Plan, directed by Daniel Markowicz, is jam-packed. From the very beginning, he sets the tone of the story with a drug dealer who has gotten to high school students.
He has been planting these drugs in schools and these poor teenagers fall deep into addiction. After a teacher tragically dies, his friend, who happens to be a former cop, takes over his old job in hopes of catching the people responsible for his murder, as per the synopsis on IMDB.
The cop takes his old skills while he was working undercover and he applies that to teaching his friend’s students how to defend themselves, just in case they ever encountered these henchmen with the drugs. what was so interesting about this was the fact that the teens who weren’t on drugs were so keen on helping their classmates get out of the addiction.
They were very vocal about their friend’s whereabouts in front of teachers and they ended up forming their own group to find them. While all this is happening, the cop has to deal with his own trauma as his past comes back to haunt him.
When he was undercover, he got so close to getting the head dealer, but it cost him his wife. So he tries to live again and turn those bad moments into something good by helping these teens.
The film has some great action but when it gets into the fight choreography it looks unpolished. It does begin to drag in the middle because there are many characters involved, and the story gets lost.
But, once the teens get involved with their group it picks back up again. The better thread of the story is how these teens are helping each other, you get to see the underground of the drug deals and it’s concerning.
This really does happen in many high schools in different countries, and it’s difficult to actually stop this. It becomes like an idea planted in someone’s mind and it’s almost impossible to yank it out.
Apart from the character development of the cop, the movie does highlight the early signs of addiction and what to watch for when you’re a parent with a teen in high school.
Markowicz made some good decisions in regard to teaching the children how to defend themselves. He was able to have the former cop develop into someone with a heart and he seemed healed by the end of this film.
Even though bad things can happen to good people, it doesn’t mean they have to stay broken. There’s a way to patch everything together.
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