Hugh Jackman shines in Bad Education, playing a con artist who's a compelling contradiction

The A.V. Club

The HBO movie, starring Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney that documents a Long Island high school scandal, is an "engrossing procedural of white-collar crime. Cooking the books may sound like dry subject matter, but the film gives it a jolt of psychological urgency by building a whole house-of-cards narrative around a character of compelling contradiction: a con artist who’s managed to square his genuine commitment to the community (and the future of its children) with his betrayal of it," says A.A. Dowd. Bad Education, Dowd adds, "takes time and great care laying out the interpersonal dynamics of the school system, before slowly lifting the veil to reveal what few within that system knew or allowed themselves to know."

ALSO:

• Bad Education is a crime story that doesn’t need violence to get the viewer’s heart racing
• Bad Educattion illustrates, above all, how psychological movies can remain impersonal, how issue-oriented ones can be apolitical
• There’s the general tone of uncovering something shocking and nefarious, but Bad Education is far more interesting when it’s sympathetic toward its stated villains
• Bad Education serves up stellar performances from Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney
• Allison Janney worked with a dialect coach for Bad Education, but suffice it to say she’s been training for the role nearly her whole life