One Eight Seven
| 187 | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Kevin Reynolds |
| Produced by |
Bruce Davey Stephen McEveety |
| Written by | Scott Yagemann |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Ericson Core |
| Edited by | Stephen Semel |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
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Release date
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Running time
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120 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20 million (estimated) |
| Box office | $5,716,080 (USA) |
| 187 | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Soundtrack album by Various artists | |
| Released | July 29, 1997 |
| Recorded | 1997 |
| Genre | Hip hop, electronica, trip hop |
| Label | Atlantics |
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
One Eight Seven (also known and abbreviated as 187) is a 1997 crime drama film directed by Kevin Reynolds. It was the first top-billed starring role for Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a Los Angeles teacher caught with gang trouble in an urban high school. The film's name comes from the California Penal Code Section 187.
Trevor Garfield (Samuel L. Jackson) is an African American high school science teacher at Roosevelt Whitney High School, a high school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Dennis Broadway (Method Man), a gangster student to whom he had given a failing grade threatens to murder him, writing the number 187 (the California police code for homicide) on every page in a textbook. The administration ignores the threat, and Dennis ambushes Garfield in the hallway, stabbing him in the back and side abdominal area multiple times with a shiv.
Fifteen months after surviving, Garfield, now a substitute teacher, has relocated to John Quincy Adams High School in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, but trouble starts again when he substitutes an unruly class of rejects, including a Chicano tag crew by the name of "Kappin' Off Suckers" (K.O.S.). Their leader, Benito "Benny" Chacón (Lobo Sebastian), a felon attending high school as a condition of probation, makes it clear to Garfield that there will be no mutual respect.
The tension mounts when a fellow teacher, Ellen Henry (Kelly Rowan), confides that Benny has threatened her life, an action against which the administration of the school refuses to take action, fearing legal threats. After Benny murders a rival tagger in cold blood, he disappears, and Benny's unstable tag partner, César Sanchez (Clifton Collins Jr.), takes over as leader. When César steals Garfield's family heirloom watch, the principal is more concerned about a lawsuit and refuses to take action. Ellen and Garfield develop a close friendship that approaches the beginnings of a relationship, but is stymied by Garfield's destabilizing behavior and his confrontations with the K.O.S.. Garfield's past garners the unwanted admiration of Dave Childress (John Heard), an alcoholic history teacher who carries guns at the school.
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