I started watching this on TV tonight and after being amazed that even a TV movie this bad would make it on to the BBC ended up watching nearly the whole thing.First of all, how many high schools anywhere have their own guard and barbed wire above the entrance to the third floor? And kids whose main purpose for being in school is to take out their History teacher?!! When they're not car-jacking and bringing their new wheels into school to have them modded in 'shop' that is. Then there's the guy who takes Shop, played by BD Wong. Now if you want a bloke who's meant to be so evil that when one of his pupils gets killed (whilst stealing a car for him) he says 'that's the first piece of good news i've had today', why cast a camp bloke of 5'4' as the said baddie?! His tight jumpers and muscular physique make him look more like the barman from the local gay bar than some evil car-jacking mastermind who dabbles in CDT, but there you go.The shoot-outs (inside the school?!) are classic in their own, badly choreographed, pump thousands of bullets at a target ten metres away and miss, then finally take out the target and mutter something witty like 'one down, three to go', way. Then our hero Treat Williams finally gets cornered by four gun toting bad guys and guess what saves him? A couple of canisters releasing what looks like slowly wafting dry ice so that he can make his escape. Then there's the Vietnam vet janitor who has his own war-chest of old military weapons in the basement, and a semi automatic rifle in the cupboard?!! This film teaches that if you want to get the respect of your knife wielding, car-jacking, substitute teacher killing pupils, then the best way to do so is kill a load of their mates and then knock off their 'shop' teacher for good measure. Then you can walk off, laughing weakly with your adoring niece, as the pupils who have just watched one of their teachers get killed by another stand around mouthing 'wow'. I really hope that whoever wrote this doesn't go into politics.Oh and Treat Williams, although he does a good job of spouting forth diatribes whilst messing around with a yo-yo, is as wooden an action hero as I've ever seen.If you want to see a really, really bad film that shouldn't even have made it to 'TV Movie' status then you must watch this. Otherwise avoid it at all costs.

Hey, it's not great, but it was fun to watch. Played it on BBC1 (UK) on Sat 11 Feb, 23:50. I wasn't planning on watching it, I hadn't heard of it before, nothing much else to do so I left it on.I enjoyed it, so that's more than I was expecting. The story was a little poor, the acting wasn't amazing, but hey, if nothing better is on - watch it! It should keep you busy.There are lots of unrealistic scenes, but it's not supposed to be a highly complex film.I probably wouldn't watch it for a second time. I'll give it a six because it kept me busy for 85 minutes, and there was lots of ghetto talk, MOH F**KER. Haha.

First of all, Treat Williams character is named 'Karl Thomasson' NOT 'John Shale' as alluded to in the 'plot summary'. John Shale was Tom Berenger's character's name in the original 'substitute'. Get with it IMDb. As for the movie... it is OK if you like bad guys getting theirs. if you like Treat Williams it is very good. overall I would rate the movie a 6-7. ( I like Treat, Hair is an outstanding movie and I hate musicals.) If you have not seen 'Hair', do so. Its a really great movie about the lengths friends will go for each other. see 'Substitute' only if there's nothing else on or you're a Treat Williams fan. All 4 'Substitute' movies are basically the same plot. Mercenary takes offense at the treatment of others at the hands of thugs and takes matters into his own hands to make the bad guys pay.

Treat Williams takes over for Tom Berenger in this sequel that has nothing to do with its predesser. Williams poses as a teacher to find the people who murdered his brother and uncovers a ring of corruption. Less action than the first but Williams is actually a sometimes threating guy and gives a believable performance. Even though it won't kill any brain cells it is worth checking out.