Gripping story with well-crafted characters

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The premise of this Substitute film is most ridiculous. It seems that the commander of a southern military school speaks in a modulated voice, but is the definition of a racist. With some of the students, they plot mayhem.As always, Treat Williams is sent in to infiltrate the bad guys and finish them off.As the history teacher, Williams has little to offer in the classroom. This is obvious because of his real mission. There is a love interest, a lady physician, but amazingly she is not all that she supposedly is.The ending is so cliché where the students turn against the racist.This series has shown better writing material.

The military officer and former mercenary Karl Thomasson (Treat Williams) is sent in an undercover mission to a military academy by his superior and friend, Gal. Bud Teague, to investigate the performance and methods of the commandant of the base, Col. Brack (Patrick Kilpatrick). Karl is introduced as if he were a history teacher, and sooner he finds that the school has a neo-Nazi group called Werewolves under the direct command of Col. Brack. "The Substitute: Failure Is Not an Option" is a totally absurd story. I have been a great fan of Treat Williams since "Hair", I try to see all his movies, but this one has some of the most unreasonable situations I have ever seen. The ridiculous beginning of the story in South America is completely out of the context. The beauty and the breasts of the always-gorgeous Angie Everhart is the best this movie can offer, but is not enough to support this forgettable flick. My vote is three.Title (Brazil): "O Substituto 4" ("The Substitute 4")

Okay, when I saw it in the video, I just couldn't believe it...after a first boring film, they made a second one, and after the very bad second one, they made an awful third one, and after the third one, here goes the forth one...Well, let's just say it is worse than the first and second ones, but better than the third. But it still sucks a lot. Some gratuitous nudity scenes, some cheap action sequences, and when I say SOME, it doesn't mean a lot...nothing happens during the whole movie, until the very predictable ending...One important point is the one liners...they are so awful it's terrible...the problem is that it is SOOOO evident that it's a mechanical and not natural sentence that comes out of Treat Williams' mouth...the acting isn't so bad, especially in William's case, but the way he says his one liners makes it a bad performance, and another factor to approve this fact is the stupid and pointless character that they offered him...and why is this called The Substitute??? The guy's just a mercenary, and he's in a military school, he's more a soldier than a teacher, he always beats up one student...with teachers like that, don't ask yourself why there are so many high school drop-outs...I mean, in the first and second films, the agent was a substitute, but in this one he isn't...There's an error in the script because they kill young boys in Panama, and one of them has the Werewolves' sign in his face (The Werewolves are a clan of nazi students at the Military College, and they are only 5 or 6 of them, so none of these folks could be in Panama...). This film has a very conventional script, with even less flavor, some below average acting, and boring directing. I guess we should wait for the fifth one, then the sixth one, and then the "Substitute Gift Box"...bad film. 4/10

This movie is one of those movies you try to watch when nothing else is on, and you have absolutely nothing else to do.I tried, and I failed. I tried again, and I failed again.I'm not much of a Treat Williams fan, but he occasionally, if only by accident, turns up in some pretty decent B movies. This isn't one of them.The high point of the movie is a ridiculous scene with a group of cadets in a circle clanging hatchets (yes, you read that right) and yelling "Kill! Burn! Bomb! Wolverine Power!!" or some such nonsense. I actually laughed out loud. Hysterically - I couldn't stop. I ended up with the hiccups.This movie only rates a 99 cents rental. Anything more would be overpriced.