Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I just got out of the 8:30am press screening (damn these early mornings!) of ASSASSINATION OF A HIGH SCHOOL PRESIDENT, starring Reece Thompson, Mischa Barton and Bruce Willis.

Reece Thompson was the lead in one of my favorite Sundance ’07 flicks, ROCKET SCIENCE that got a limited release later in the year. He plays the geek really well because he’s not really playing the stereotypical nerd in both ROCKET SCIENCE and ASSASSINATION. He’s shy, awkward, but not Napoleon Dynamite or Booger or anything.

In this film he’s a high school newspaper nerd. I’m very familiar with that world and was very much like a fat version of Thompson’s character in the movie. He’s young (everybody thinks he’s a freshman, but he’s a sophomore), he does his own thing, much to the chagrin of the hot editor-in-chief, who he has a little thing for (check, check and check).

Anyway, ASSASSINATION OF A HIGH SCHOOL PRESIDENT is a comedy set in a Catholic School. In this case, it’s like mixing THE MALTESE FALCON and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN and setting it within the world of a Catholic School filled with crazy people.

The craziest might be Bruce Willis, who is the gum-hating Gulf War Vet who might just beat the shit out of his students… and he makes them sing songs about America. You can tell he came in for a few days to do his work, but they pepper him throughout and he’s great.

But not as great as Josh Pais in the bit part of the goofy Spanish teacher. He speaks in a light, effeminate way, always asking for his students to speak to him in Espanol… which of course they never do.

The main thrust of the story is a nerdy high school newspaper writer, who is obsessed with Woodward and Bernstein, is tasked with doing a profile of the student body president, the popular jock Paul Moore (played by Patrick Taylor). As the writer, Bobby Funke (pronounced Funk, but everybody calls him Funky… at some point he just gives up correcting everybody), delves into Moore he finds conspiracy.

The SATs are stolen and Funke is tasked to find out who dun it… by the President’s girlfriend, the hot and popular girl (Barton).

Barton is beautiful, of course, and is totally this movie’s femme fatale. And Mr. Skin better upgrade their servers for the bathtub scene…

If I had any complaint about the film it would be that it seems to be trying really, really hard to be BRICK, but a little less dark. At least that was my worry during the first reel, but thankfully the film finds its own voice as it goes along.

Good stuff here.

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com