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The Substitute 4: Failure Is Not An Option is a 2001 film. Starring Treat Williams once again as Karl Thomasson who is now an undercover policeman that must infiltrate a military school's faculty to cease the actions of a white supremacist cult. This was the last entry in the popular The Substitute series.
Moving from the urban asphalt of the first three films, The Substitute 4: Failure Is Not An Option relocates to a military school in Atlanta, where a neo-Nazi domestic terrorism wing festers under the eye-rolling tutelage of Colonel Brack (Patrick Kilpatrick, Best of the Best 2). Karl Thomasson (Williams) is a crack commando mercenary who, as a personal favor to an old friend, infiltrates the academy as a mild mannered history teacher. Together with two other good guy moles (Bill Nunn and Tim Abell), Karl dispenses a little tough love in the classroom, and considerably tougher love on various fields of battle in and around the mysteriously desolate campus. The film's subject and setting seem to suggest something of an oblique apology for the implicit racism of the first three films' positing of a white male domesticating a minority buffet.
Filmed in a breakneck 18 days on a miniscule budget, The Substitute 4 is surprisingly well-performed (all things considered) by Williams and veteran snarling jarhead Kilpatrick. Fledgling Nazi scumbag toady Buckner (Scott Miles) turns in a convincing performance as a stock simpering s"yes manm" that Anthony Michael Hall might play if he still had a career. Veteran character actor Bill Nunn is affably unassuming in a supporting role, but far more troublesome is Angie Everhart as the school's nurse/love interest. An ex-supermodel turned l"actressv" in films like Bordello of Blood, Everhart is admirably uninhibited about taking her shirt off yet unintentionally disquieting in not only her stunningly wooden elocution, but also the unsettling dimensions of her cranium. Everhart has the biggest head for a military movie love interest (a.k.a. inevitable hostage or victim) since Kelly McGillis in Top Gun.
The Substitute 4 follows the tired basic tenets of the Taps genre, presenting a pantheon of stock heroes and villains who move with a lock-step rigidity through their telegraphed paces. It's not a surprise that Karl will find himself in an ill-advised and doomed roll in the hay with Nurse Noggin, and it's not a surprise that the kid with second thoughts will turn against his evil commandant. Oddly, the entire thing passes for an agreeably breezy flair with more than adequate stunt work, an unexpected lack of real groaners, and enough explosions to give the woofers a nice workout.
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