Detachment (15)

Director Tony Kaye, famous for disowning his neo-Nazi film American History X, here takes on the crisis in American education.

Adrien Brody plays a substitute teacher named Henry Barthes who comes to a New York high school threatened with closure on account of poor grades and its perceived blight on property prices.

Henry carries a noble pain in his eyes and proves a model of good sense next to his staff room colleagues – principal Marcia Gay Harden, Lucy Liu, James Caan, Blythe Danner, Christina Hendricks – outstanding performers given little to do aside from act hysterical. Their collective task is no longer to educate the pupils, it seems, but to ensure "nobody kills anybody".

Henry, rescuing a 15-year-old runaway (Sami Gayle) and mentoring a bullied girl (Betty Kaye) in his class, finds his natural self-containment under threat, while Kaye peppers the narrative with Brody's to-camera monologues and manic chalkboard animations.

Detachment is a drama about the problem of teenagers that sounds like it was written by one, though the solemn references to a "marketing holocaust" and a "carnival of pain" are the work of writer Carl Lund, possibly egged on by Kaye himself. Like the system it deplores, it's pretty much a mess, though with a cast this strong you get moments of saving grace.