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

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.

I watched this movie in a class. I have no religion, so it was quite difficult to understand why they discriminated against David just because of his religion. It may imply what a deep-rooted problem it is. I asked my host mother if this problem still exists or not, and she said no. These days, the biggest discrimination problem in the US is about the blacks. This problem is lasting for a while. They should care about it more.

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.