Given a scholarship to an exclusive protestant boarding school in desperate need of a star quarterback, a Jewish athlete is instructed to conceal his religion with grave consequences in this drama set during the 1950s. Brendan Fraser provides an earnest turn as the internally conflicted young man in question, however, the movie takes an inordinate amount of time to warm up. The main dynamic driving the film, after all, is how all of Fraser's peers react after inevitably finding out the truth, and yet this does not occur until around halfway in with little else driving the plot. A fascinating subplot involves Zeljko Ivanek as a pedantic French teacher who causes one of Fraser's peers to have a mental breakdown. There are also some memorable dialogue exchanges as the students discuss the pressures and expectations placed upon them. Additionally, there is a curious dynamic at play with the school "using" Fraser for football and Fraser in turn using the school as a platform for college. That said, the vast majority of the film revolves around anti-Semitism, which is unfortunately never quite as interesting as kids cracking under pressure or a school manipulating its students. The anti-Semitism angles is not totally uninteresting though, especially as the boys discuss how few Jews they have actually known and come to realise that a lot of the stereotypes they have come to know might just be stereotypes, but the film could have easily been about so much more. Fraser is really good in any case, and same goes for Matt Damon as the student who most aggressively antagonises him.
Review of School Ties
