Entertainment

TV: HBO film re-creates excitement of students' protest of school inequalities

12:00 AM CST on Saturday, March 18, 2006

By ROBERT LLOYD Los Angeles Times

HOLLYWOOD – Walkout, airing tonight on HBO, tells the story of the East Los Angeles Chicano student walkouts of 1968, staged to protest inequalities in the school system. Directed by local lad Edward James Olmos (who also plays school board member Julian Nava) and filmed largely where it happened, it does better than most such re-creations at transmitting the flavor of a time and the excitement of living through it.

This might be in part because executive producer Moctesuma Esparza (Selena, The Milagro Beanfield War) in fact did live through it; indeed, he helped organize the walkouts, for which he was indicted as part of the so-called "LA 13" for "conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor," which made the misdemeanor a felony. (He's played here by Mr. Olmos' son, Bodie Olmos.)

The filmmakers have elected, however, to tell the story mainly through the experience of bright high school senior Paula Crisostomo (Alexa Vega, from the Spy Kids movies) and her consciousness-raising relationship with teacher Sal Castro (Michael Pena, The Shield).

Ms. Vega's urgent performance, as much as anything, is what makes the film work, although it is full of good work, most notably from Efren Ramirez (Pedro in Napoleon Dynamite) as one of Paula's less-involved friends.

There isn't much in the way of plot or of character relationship. An almost-romance between Paula and a fellow movement worker plays as contrived. Her home life is characterized by a standard generational estrangement. And there is a slight lack of historical context as well: Students were walking out of colleges and high schools all over the world that explosive year.

None of this matters much in the end, for the film has real energy and a feeling for people and places. The scenes at the Mexican-American Youth Leadership Conference in Malibu, where Paula meets her mentors, have exactly the right note of youthful discovery, and the demonstrations have a convincing size, force and momentum.

For all its minor faults, Walkout communicates the thrill of being swept up in something bigger, and a young person's first inklings of belonging to a point in history, a history that might be influenced. Such early convictions often fade, but not – to judge by the moving, brief interviews that run along with the closing credits – with many of the people portrayed here.Walkout

B7 tonight, HBO. Starring Alexa Vega, Yancey Arias, Efren Ramirez, Michael Pena. Directed by Edward James Olmos. 2 hrs.

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