Stars: Jeff Daniels, Jena Malone, Paul Sorvino, Luke Edwards, Blake Heron, Robert Joy, Ned Eisenberg, Dan Warry-Smith

Director: John Stockwell

Summary: The kids at a Chicago High School are no-hopers but their English teacher, Gerard Plecki, pulls out all the stops for them to beat a team of kids from the other side of town in the Academic Decathlon. Gerard chances upon a way of guaranteed success but this route will change his life and that of his pupils forever...

Jeff Daniels (SPEED, ARACHNOPHOBIA) plays a teacher in an inner city Chicago high school whose students get a chance to compete in an academic decathlon. When his students win against a better-funded school, Daniels is pleased as punch... until he finds out they cheated. The resulting media feeding frenzy and disgrace plunge the school into a dramatic reassessment of the situation. Based on a true story.

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In the coda of Cheaters, John Stockwell's dramatisation of the 1995 Steinmetz school scandal, Jolie Fitch (Jena Malone) ruminates, "I learned more about the way the world really works from my nine months on the academic decathlon team than most people will learn in a lifetime". Fitch is the team leader of the crumbling inner-city school's first "academic decathlon" squad, a group of hard-working kids hopelessly outclassed by the perennial champions from a lavishly funded model school for the gifted and the rich. When a Steinmetz student discovers the question sheet for the upcoming finals, the issue isn't whether to cheat, but how. Stockwell discards easy moralising and empty platitudes for an ambiguous perspective framed by questions of privilege and prejudice. Jeff Daniels, so long the cinema's hapless nice guy, is excellent as the tireless teacher, a well-meaning idealist who struggles with his inner demons through the ordeal. Malone is refreshing as a streetwise class brain whose ambition drives the team on. Their guilt is the focus of a predatory media scandal, but it's the hypocrisy of the system and the double standards of the gatekeepers that Stockwell takes to task in his compelling drama. Some might call it cynical, but Cheatersis too sharp and smart for such an easy label. Better to call it disillusioned.--Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	4:3 Full Frame
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Theatrical Trailer
Subtitles:	None
Year:	2000
Release Date:	June 7, 2004
Runtime:	102 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C C D 8745
Keywords:	General, Drama, Cheaters
Genre:	Drama