Film Review: RADICAL: Powerhouse Addition to Maverick Teacher Victory Canon [Sundance 2023]

Radical Review

Radical (2023) Film Review from the 45th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Christopher Zalla, starring Eugenio Derbez, Daniel Haddad, Jennifer Trejo, Mia Fernanda Solis, Danilo Guardiola, Gilberto Barraza, Victor Estrada, Manuel Márquez, Christian González, and Ermis Cruz.

Christopher Zalla adapts the powerful true story of a maverick teacher who inspires gifted but neglected students in Radical.

Movies about reclaiming potential of at-risk students have always been a perennial favorite. Up the Down Staircase came along in 1967, written by a New York City schoolteacher, along with To Sir, With Love that same year, focused on a school for delinquents in London’s rough-and-tumble East End. A remarkably similar theme was explored in Ramón Menéndez’s 1988 feature, Stand and Deliver.

So trite as the students-in-peril trope might appear on the surface, it never seems to get old. This is especially true in a situation like that portrayed in Radical. Writer/director Christopher Zalla took his second award, the Festival Favorite Award, in as many entries for Radical. His first, Blood of My Blood, took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2007.

Christopher Zalla’s current entry into this trope shoots wider, and zings right into the heart. Here the maverick teacher Sergio Juarez (Eugenio Derbez), like those in the films mentioned above, gets yoked to a systemic problem where the remedy necessitates a shakedown. And buck authority he certainly did, like Sylvia Barrett, Mark Thackeray, and Jaime Escalante, albeit to much greater degree. These stories are all based, to some extent, on true ones, even those which are technically creative nonfiction. Radical is taken directly from reportage.

There are differences, of course. Despite both involving impoverished Latino students, there is a wide gulf in context. In Radical, the stakes are much, much higher, as are the rewards.

Bureaucracy

New teacher Sergio Juarez starts day one with a shakeup, letting the students decide how to run the class; the buck stops with them. In short, Sergio employs critical thinking, diametrically opposed to the Mexican’s state policy. Mexico’s strategy was to satisfy a state-mandated educational prescription by improving the worst students’ testing scores by rote memorization. Juarez also got more than he bargained for; the brighter students took up the challenge along with him right away. Among these is Paloma (Jennifer Trejo), whose genius might have been buried under poverty and the overprotection by her junk dealer father.

As noted, other films dealing with the futility and frustration in academia by way of politicking and glad handing. Similar to that of the “No Child Left Behind” strategy of the Bush Administration, no matter how well intentioned, the school principal is as much a victim as Sergio; however, the former’s enthusiasm finally wins the guy over.

Corruption & Crime

Paloma and her Papa were not the only ones at risk. Her classmates learn early that prosperity is tantamount to mob rule in Mexico, and brooks no competition from any classroom. Where futility and derision fails to convince these students, fear certainly does. And with any group who panders to the disadvantaged, the local gang gets kids younger than usual; these are sixth-graders.

Thus there is no time or space for regrets over a road not taken, and Nico, an 11-year-old mule paid with his life for defying the local gang. Taken as her father’s self-fulfilling prophesy, Paloma lets go of any dreams she had of higher education in deference to the work handed to women of her ilk: child bearing, child rearing, domestic duties, or in Paloma’s case, re-selling refurbished junk from the mountain of trash in her own backyard.

After Nico’s death, even Sergio gives up the fight and his classroom. The Principal, however, uses Paloma’s decision to drop out as leverage and Sergio returns — on probation, agreeing to bolster test scores via rote. But Sergio underestimated the initiative of the students he inspired; those who returned did indeed achieve satisfactory standard test scores, including Paloma herself as the most stunning example, who later became an eminent scientist.

This is one of those occasional tearjerkers that heals both mind and soul, and has yet to go out of style, and hopefully it never will.

Rating: 9.5/10

Leave your thoughts on this Radical review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons. Readers seeking more Sundance Film Festival news can visit our Sundance Film Festival Page, our Film Festival Page, and our Film Festival Facebook Page. Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page.

Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Feedly, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, Telegram, Mastodon, and Flipboard.