School Ties

1992 • 107 minutes

About this movie

Brendan Fraser (George of the Jungle) leads an all-star cast including Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting), Ben Affleck (Chasing Amy and Shakespeare in Love) and Chris O'Donnell (Batman Forever) in this acclaimed coming-of-age drama. After receiving a scholarship to an exclusive prep school, working-class teen David Greene (Fraser) becomes a star athlete and wins the attention of a beautiful debutante (Amy Locane). But the ties of his newfound friendships are broken when a student reveals the secret David has tried to conceal--he is Jewish. Now David must take the most important stand of his life, one that will touch the lives of many and forever change the course of his future.

Ratings and reviews

What I liked very much about “School Ties” was that the viewer understands the reasons for almost every character, even if they do evil things like Dillon when he cheats on the test. The movie doesn’t divide the characters into “good” and “evil” from the beginning, although throughout the movie it becomes obvious that some students are really racist and not fair towards David. Nevertheless, Dillon makes a good “antagonist” because you can actually identify with his situation and his thoughts about David. In general, it tells a lot about prejudices and religious conflicts in the 1950’s which is also depicted in small details such as David praying at night because he wanted to and also had to play the football game in order to keep his scholarship during the day. In general, I think the actors who play the main characters do a very good job in displaying the feelings and emotions. What I didn’t like so much is that the plot is, from my opinion, quite predictable and not very profound. Also, the other characters besides Green and Dillon do not have enough space to develop in my opinion; they just fulfill “classmate stereotypes” too much in my opinion.

This movie tells David Green's story. This guy is a very handsome and talented football player who comes from a poor background. He has the chance to enter in a prestigious preparatory school full of spoiled students , which gave him a scholarship. David have everything going for him, except that he is Jewish. This story happens in the 50's so the students in St Matthew are still racists. When the students discovers that David is a Jew, they cut all their friendships off. When the day of the history exam occurred, someone cheated, and the teacher discovered it. He decided to flunk everyone if the cheater doesn't confess. David saw Dillon cheating, but Dillon accused him of being the cheater. The class council met to make a decision... School Ties shows us from an interesting point of view how it was to be Jew in the 50's. In fact, this is not because the war was over that everyone immediately stopped being anti-Semite. This is only in 1970 that racism became forbidden. This is a really realistic movie, the story could perfectly be a true story. That makes us feel a lot more concerned about it. This is a perfect movie to learn about post-war Jew's situation.

David Greene is one of the best American football players in school. Because of this, he got a scholarship to entre a noble school where most of the students are from the upper class. In the new school, because of his outstanding sports skill and nice personality, he meets a lot of new friends including Charlie Dillon. Charlie is from an upper class family and he has a touch and go relationship with Sally Wheeler. However after she met David, Sally had interest in David more than Charlie which made Charlie very worked up. One day Charlie exposed David is a Jew to other students in school. Since that time, everyone tried to keep distance with him and they were not friendly to David anymore. I like this movie because it presents the real life according the school scene.