Jackman shines in sordid school scandal story

Hugh Jackman gives a career best performance in Bad Education, director Corey Finley’s dramatic recounting of a real-life high school embezzlement scandal that rocked the Long Island school district in 2002.

Jackman plays dedicated school superintendent Dr Frank Tassone. Under his tenure Roslyn High School has gone from an adequate but unnoticed school to one of the top five schools in the state. It is also flush with enough cash to fork out $7.5m for a shiny new sky bridge.

Tassone’s friend and assistant, Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney), is discovered to have skimmed off truckloads of taxpayers’ cash to fund her suspiciously lavish lifestyle by the diligent persistence of school paper reporter Rachel Bhargava (Geraldine Viswanathan), who threatens to expose a long-running fraud implicating most members of the school’s administration. As the investigation proceeds, we’re drawn further into Frank’s personal life and the scam — the biggest in US school history.

Expertly balancing Frank’s exterior charm with the deep and scarring effects of his history of lying to himself and everyone around him, Jackman delivers a brilliant portrait of a man caught in a maelstrom, whose fall from grace offers the arc of a classical tragedy couched in the familiar comforts of middle-class, 21st century suburban aspirations.

It’s a smart, darkly humorous, sometimes cringeworthy tale of corruption that examines what motivates people entrusted with the wellbeing of others to sabotage their communities’ trust and good faith and enrich themselves by whatever means necessary. That’s a question South Africans are depressingly familiar with. Unfortunately, we don’t have the likes of Hugh Jackman to answer it for us.

Bad Education is available on Showmax.