Treat Williams—who so bravely battled zombies alongside Joe Piscopo in 1988's Dead Heat—stars in The Substitute 2 as a globetrotting mercenary who returns to his hometown to look after his dead brother's teenage daughter and hunt down the man who killed him. Williams promptly takes a job at the high school where his brother taught and clashes with a student body chock full of machine-gun-toting minorities hell-bent on killing their oddly peaceful new teacher. Like its predecessor, The Substitute 2 is an extraordinarily cynical film that feeds into reactionary fears that inner-city public schools are little more than breeding grounds for psychotic criminals. The grim message behind both Substitute films seems to be that because our inner-city schools are such nightmarish infernos, only combat-trained mercenaries are up to the task of teaching there. But the film's cynicism is matched by its stupidity and contempt for logic. In probably The Substitute 2's most laughably implausible scene, Williams' niece, on the verge of losing her virginity to a creepy young Eddie Munster lookalike, conveniently realizes that he's carrying around a badge that he stole from the body of her dead father. The Substitute 2 could theoretically be a lot of fun—there's a certain transgressive appeal to the idea of a teacher forced to kill and maim his students—but the film is so shoddily made, so devoid of ideas, and so woefully derivative that it fails on all levels. As a substitute teacher with a taste for bloodshed, Treat Williams sleepwalks through the film, using the same forlorn look of mild irritation even during the sluggish fight scenes. Fans of the popular rapping band Gang Starr, however, will no doubt be delighted by the presence of Guru, who, in keeping with the film's xenophobia, plays a machine-gun-wielding gang leader.