This is the first feature film in almost 15 years from Tony Kaye, the eccentric British director of American History X, and he has assembled an impressive cast for someone once considered a pariah. Adrien Brody plays a supply teacher with a mantra of distancing himself from his charges; Christina Hendricks the fellow teacher intrigued by his quizzical frown, and Lucy Liu a hapless careers adviser. Kaye turns this parable into a full-on psychodrama – triggered by the arrival of a runaway street kid (Sami Gayle); it's watchable enough, but the bludgeoning screenplay seems undercooked compared to the high-grade actors on show.