The story turns on a tear-jerking scene in which hardened L.A. gang members get misty-eyed in the presence of elderly Miep Gies, the woman who decades earlier had hidden Anne Frank from the Nazis. It's a moment of cultural juxtaposition worthy of the best fictional screenwriter.

Only this moment actually happened.

Freedom Writers, a story-driven urban drama, is a mostly faithful adaptation of The Freedom Writers Diary, a best-selling collection of student journal entries compiled by the kids who wrote it and their white teacher, Erin Gruwell. In the 1990s,

Gruwell was a young, idealistic teacher assigned to a class of incorrigible, underachieving black and Hispanic high school students. Frustrated with her public school's inability to educate her troubled kids, she bucked the system with unconventional teaching methods, broke the students' culture of race-based violence and mistrust, and enabled them to learn.

Gruwell's colleagues thought The Diary of Anne Frank was beyond her students' reading level, but they were so moved by the book's account of an oppressed teen living in a violent, racist war zone, they raised money to fly Gies to Los Angeles to address the class.

Writer-director Richard LaGravenese based his screenplay on the original book and simply let the story tell itself. Hilary Swank is to Freedom Writers what Laurence Fishburne was to Akeelah and the Bee. Without her personal interest and financial investment, the film likely would never have happened. Swank throws herself into the role of the stubborn, inexhaustible Gruwell, a teacher who refuses to take "no" for an answer from her students, faculty, administrators, and husband, well played by Patrick Dempsey.

Hip-hop/R&B singer Mario has a supporting role as a Freedom Writer, and April L. Hernandez embraces a challenging role as a racist student who witnesses a murder by a fellow Hispanic and balances what she has learned in Miss G's class against her father's wishes. Perhaps 20-year-old newcomer Jason Finn, himself a former troubled youth from the L.A. projects, best represents the actual student body in an emotional role that shows the practical value of Gruwell's unorthodox teaching methods.

The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. John Hayes is a staff writer for the Post-Gazette.

Contact him at:

hayes@post-gazette.com

or 412-263-1991.

First Published January 5, 2007, 4:24 p.m.