One Eight Seven

One Eight Seven (also known as 187) is a 1997 American crime thriller film directed by Kevin Reynolds. It was the first top-billed starring role for Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a Los Angeles teacher caught with gang trouble in an urban high school. The film's name comes from the California Penal Code Section 187, which defines murder. The original screenplay was written in 1995 by Scott Yagemann, a Los Angeles area high school substitute teacher for seven years. He wrote the screenplay after an incident when a violent transfer student had threatened to kill him and his family. Yagemann reported the threat to the authorities and the student was arrested. About a week later, he was called by the district attorney to testify against the student in a court of law, where the student was being prosecuted for stabbing a teacher's aide a year before. This annoyed Yagemann, who had not been told about it beforehand, and led to him writing the screenplay. He claimed that 90% of the film's material is based on incidents that had happened to him and other teachers in real life. Plot Trevor Garfield is a high school science teacher in Brooklyn. Dennis Broadway, a gangster student to whom he had given a failing grade, threatens to murder him, writing the number 187 (the police code for homicide) on every page in a textbook. Garfield reports his concerns to the administration, who ignores Garfield's warning. Soon afterwards, Dennis ambushes Garfield in the school hallway, stabbing him in the back and side multiple times with a shiv. Garfield survives and is shown resuming his teaching career as a substitute teacher fifteen months later. He relocates to the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, but is assigned to another class of unruly students, including a Chicano tag crew by the name of "Kappin' Off Suckers" (K.O.S.). Their leader, Benny Chacón, a felon attending high school as a condition of probation, makes it clear to Garfield that there will be no mutual respect.