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Review: Hugh Jackman steals millions of dollars from schools in Bad Education

By Tim Augustin - 17 Apr 2020

Review: Hugh Jackman steals millions of dollars from schools in Bad Education

Image: HBO

It’s always fun to watch Hugh Jackman play a bad guy. But is he even a bad guy here?

Bad Education tells the story of Frank Tassone, a man who helped embezzle a massive US$11.2 million from schools, while working for said schools. Hugh Jackman plays Tassone - a superintendent serving the Roslyn school district in New York. Tassone has slicked-back hair, sharp suits and an earnest smile for anyone but himself - but he gets along well with the schools he serves, and the students within them. 

Underneath Tassone’s endless supply of smoothies and fancy suits is a man who really thought he deserved the cartoonish amount of money he stole. This HBO original movie dives into why he would do such a thing - but doesn’t care so much about how he did it. 

 

Getting the district to Number One

Image: HBO

Bad Education is quick to introduce the higher-ups working in the Roslyn school District - superintendent Frank Tassone, budget-crunching Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney) and an always-nervous school board president Bob Spicer (Ray Romano). We’re quickly brought up to speed that Tassone was practically a deity in Roslyn - working hard to make it the number one institution to be for education in the entire region. He’s gotten tantalisingly close so far, which is good enough for everyone else but himself. 

Tassone appears to be a great guy at first. He attends book clubs, remembers every student’s name and treats his coworkers with nothing but kindness and respect. Behind the scenes, he lies about being a widower and enjoys riches using the district’s money. The point of Bad Education however, is that neither of these sides of Tassone outweigh the other. He’s a pretty bad guy who did some really great things for Roslyn - and he was proud to do it, too. 

Even when Rachel Bhargava (Miracle Workers’ Geraldine Viswanathan), a budding journalist for the school paper, comes a-knocking to get information for the school’s upcoming skywalk, Tassone ushers her into the room and waxes poetic on her ambitions. Bhargava exits his office a little more determined to do some quality journalism, and Tassone has unwittingly set up a pile of dominoes that will tumble towards his own doom. 

 

Hugh Jackman steals this movie

Image: HBO

Bad Education takes its time to get to the point. Most movies and documentaries based on massive real-life crimes like these tend to be big and bombastic in tone - see McMillions and the Wolf of Wall Street. This movie is labelled a comedy-drama, but the small amount of comedy here is sidelined by a whole lot of character drama. A US$11.2 million crime calls for high-stakes storytelling and a frenetic pace, but Bad Education resists that urge, providing a more balanced look at the crime’s perpetrators instead. There are no big villains here - just a bunch of people with extremely broken moral compasses. 

The movie takes detours here and there into the lives of the people affected by the crime - such as Pam Gluckin, who is immediately thrown under the bus when the school board first catches wind of the embezzlement. Bhargava slowly unravels the massive scheme that Tassone has put into place, publishing an article on her school paper that would end more than one career in Roslyn’s education system. 

None of these story threads are as fascinating as Tassone’s however, and that’s all due to Jackman’s fantastic portrayal. He puts on a deeply human performance here, playing a man embezzling money from schools while still putting enormous effort into bettering them. It almost makes no sense, until Jackman helps you realise that Tassone did care for the students under him - it wasn’t just an act he put on for a good payday. Though his motives aren’t made very clear, we do know one thing. He loved his job - and that makes his crimes that much more interesting. 

 

A couple negatives

Image: HBO

Bad Education is yet another film based on an almost unbelievable true crime, but it portrays its subject matter in an understated manner. It guides you into a study of who exactly Tassone was, and what might have drove him to the things he did. I would’ve loved it if the writing was up to par with these ambitions, but it simply isn’t. There isn’t much new to see here besides its tone. 

This movie seems haphazard in its storytelling. It’s centred around a US$11.2 million embezzlement scheme, but most of it plods along without so much as winking at what we came here to see. Instead, it spends too much time in bland conversation and disconnected storylines, allowing Jackman to flex his acting chops while failing to develop the story in an interesting way. 

When Bad Education actually tries to veer off into subject matter beyond Tassone’s psyche, its efforts just come off as thin and uninspired. It seems unfocused, shining less of a spotlight on the crime than the people involved in it - though one is decidedly more interesting than the other. With better writing, I would have loved to see more of Gluckin dealing with the fallout of her crimes and Bhargava’s quest for truth, but the movie relies too much on familiar tropes for their scenes to have any emotional bite. 

 

Verdict

Image: HBO

Bad Education might not handle its subject matter as deftly as I’d have liked it to, but Hugh Jackman still steals the show here. A particularly grounded and human approach in playing Tassone allows the movie to get away with focusing so much on him and less on his criminal undertakings. In fact, the entire main cast bolsters this dramedy, providing enough dramatic finesse to keep you hooked despite the slow-moving plot. 

Though it won’t stick with you for too long, Bad Education does manage to portray its bad guys as much more than power-hungry villainous stereotypes. It’s a solid character study, with storytelling that feels refreshingly genuine despite the surreal circumstances it covers. Jackman will keep you guessing on the morality of his character throughout, and that’s worth something at the very least. 

Bad Education will premiere on HBO and HBO GO on April 26 at 8am.

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