The brilliant first (actually second) film of the precocious Mr. Cohan tells a profound story in a profound way. Carried by a wonderful screenplay (just ask Doug Liman) and a tour-de-force performance by Mr. Adam Watstein as Mr. Simmons, the film is a truly masterful success. Watstein portrays one of the great Shakespeare scholars of his day, tortured by the fact that he finds himself in a classroom teaching and takes his anger out on a Harvard-bound student, portrayed by Willie Zabar (featured in Cohan's next short--The Only Living Boy, in which you can expect to see an overwhelming amount of toe). It is quite obvious that Cohan thought critically about both the internal and external objectives of his characters and was clever in his choice of verbs. As he says in his movie--"to be" is not sufficient. Both Mr. Watstein and Mr. Cohan are ones to watch out for.
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