“Thoroughbreds,” the 2018 debut feature of the playwright Cory Finley, was not to every taste, but for acid wit and gliding camera moves, it could hardly be beat. Finley’s second feature, “Bad Education,” which airs Saturday night on HBO, traffics in a kindred casual misanthropy. The movie offers an agreeably slick account of an early-2000s scandal in which a former superintendent of schools in Roslyn, N.Y., pleaded guilty to stealing $2 million from his district.
And like the character played by Hugh Jackman, the superintendent Frank Tassone, “Bad Education” initially keeps its cards close, playing tricks with viewers’ sympathies.
Frank, his hair gelled back and his face always wrenched into a grin, goes out of his way to be presentable. He remembers details about students from years earlier or recognizes their siblings. He meets with a parent who pushes for accelerated treatment for her third-grader. He maintains (or at least fakes) an interest in the lives of his teachers. He even welcomes an unscheduled interview with a school newspaper reporter, Rachel (Geraldine Viswanathan), encouraging her to dig deeper on a story about a school construction boondoggle. This, it turns out, is one of his less sharp moves. (The real-life student journalist who helped break the story of the scandal wrote about her experiences for The New York Times.)
Part of the strength of “Bad Education” is in showing how easily Frank gets others to sign on to his plans. When it comes to light that a fellow administrator, Pam (Allison Janney), has dipped into the district’s finances to the tune of more than $200,000, Frank is, at first, able to contain the fallout by noting the impact bad press would have. College admissions, property values, a forthcoming budget vote — all would be in jeopardy. For a brief time, Pam looks like the central player in the thefts, rather than one piece of a puzzle.
The 2004 New York Magazine article on which the film is based asked whether Roslyn residents allowed themselves to be duped by Tassone. The film, which adheres to the reporting with reasonable fidelity, is, at most, slightly more charitable in its assessment. (Ray Romano, terrific as the school board president, is an island of humanity in the sea of backbiting and self-interest.)
Finley didn’t write “Bad Education,” as he did “Thoroughbreds,” and if this film lacks the stylized, pitch-black verbal parries of that movie, he outfits it with similarly precise compositions and a jarring, percussive score. The screenplay, by Mike Makowsky, a student in Roslyn during the scandal, shows an ear for Long Island flavor and class tensions, and even the set decoration is attuned to details. The student journalists’ computer software is spot-on turn-of-the-aughts.
But it’s Jackman, whose smile appears increasingly wolfish as the film goes on (and as Frank’s face grows taut with cosmetic surgery), who ultimately owns “Bad Education.” It’s a plum part, sure, but also a deeply unsympathetic one — a chance for the actor to channel his charisma toward dark, mischievous ends.
Bad Education
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch on HBO.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
