It’s been done before. The undisciplined minority students, the unsupportive and defeatist administrators and faculty and the single idealistic teacher who reaches out despite the statistics. This type of movie is hardly revolutionary. One could therefore conclude that the new film, Freedom Writers, would just be more of the same. One would be wrong.

Freedom Writers is based on the true story of high school teacher Erin Gruwell (Hillary Swank) and her students at Woodrow Wilson High School in racially turbulent early ’90s California. The administration considers these kids, many of whom are gang members of mixed ethnicities, a lost cause: an idea the students swallow and regurgitate readily. Optimistic Gruwell thinks she can reach them if she convinces them she is invested in their education. Been there, done that, right.

Not quite. The plot is a bit flimsy and some of the characters are more or less one-dimensional. For example, there is a very bare good vs. evil dynamic working between Gruwell and her inflexible administrator, the admirable Imelda Staunton. But the film is powerful enough to eclipse these flaws.

For starters, the acting is pristine. Swank expertly exhibits her chameleon-like acting prowess as the impossibly and unfalteringly idealistic Gruwell. The young actors playing Gruwell’s students (most notably April L. Hernandez, Mario Barrett and Jason Finn) effortlessly portray a group of underprivileged kids prematurely forced into adult situations.

The most essential characters in the film by far, however, are inanimate objects. Erin gives each of her students a notebook and the assignment to keep a daily journal. These journals begin as empty notebooks but the students’ words give them — and the rest of the film — life. Voice-overs of actual diary entries help narrate the film.

The prose is sometimes poetic and sometimes insightful, but always honest. Their words give us a window into lives of teenagers facing extremely challenging and frightening circumstances and strongly connect the audience with their struggle for change.