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      The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All

      R 1999 1h 27m Drama List
      Reviews 18% 500+ Ratings Audience Score Mercenary Karl Thomasson (Treat Williams) comes to Long Island to pass along a medal to his dead friend's daughter, college English teacher Nicole Stewart (Rebecca Staab). When Nicole is attacked by student football players who are afraid she might fail them, Karl acts as her substitute teacher to discover who was behind the beating. Investigating the campus, he learns that football coach Bill Braden (Scott Wilkinson) is giving his team steroids and will stop at nothing to achieve success. Read More Read Less Watch on Fandango at Home Premiered Sep 01 Buy Now

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      Audience Reviews

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      Jason A These movie just keep going down hill. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 07/22/23 Full Review Audience Member Sigh.....sadly this film falls into your generic action flick filled with explosion's and tits, sex and a lot of ass. It gets rid of your sympethic characters and replaces them with cliched action villains you just want to see die. The fights scenes are still good but sadly that is never enough to save a film. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Audience Member Treat Williams returns as the mercenary turned substitute teacher. This time he's helping a friend break up a drug ring run by a group of college football players and their coaches. Roy Frumkes and Rocco Simonelli, the writers on the original film are also back, so this third film is still tonally consistent with the prior films, maintaining the oddball genre mashup of tough urban school dramas with straight up action films. Rewatching this film make me realize I think my favorite scene in just about every crusading educator drama is the one where the new teacher first gets up in front of their students and has to take control of the class and earn the students' respect. Each of these substitute films has one of those scenes and they're always entertaining, though certainly nothing that would ever happen in reality. But realism is not why you'd watch one of the Substitute films. Like the first sequel, this film has a significantly smaller budget than the original film, but Williams is more than a capable actor and is very good in the lead. The only scene I really did not like was one where Williams gets ultra preachy in a lecture to his class on the the dangers of steroids. Claudia Christian also appears in the film as Williams' sexy partner who goes undercover to help him infiltrate the crooked football team. Certainly not a classic, but I considered myself entertained. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/31/23 Full Review Audience Member It was like feeding me dog shit. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/22/23 Full Review Audience Member THE SUBSTITUTE 3: WINNER TAKES ALL (1999) Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/14/23 Full Review Audience Member Is the Substitute franchise strong enough to warrant a third entry? No, not really but I can't help myself to enroll in any class that has Treat Williams listed as the instructor. Even if the film isn't going to be good, it's guaranteed to have some moments to bring a smile across this film buffs face. That's a good thing since I am addicted to sequels and have to see any follow-up to a film that I even remotely liked. The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All opens a little different than rest of the franchise. Instead of having the substitute title sprawl across a chalk board it now says the title over a bunch of video war footage and then we are shown Treat Williams captured in prison being tortured in the Middle East. He kills his partner, who is paralyzed from the neck down, in order to break out. Before he does he promises to make amends for him with his daughter. Back in the states we are introduced to his daughter who is a college English professor. Upon meeting with her Williams has to defend her from a bunch of high strung steroid using football players (what timing Treat has!). She ends up being attacked later by a football player due to the fact a group of them are going to fail her class. Williams, being the good Samaritan mercenary he is, gets the help of a new group of mercenary friends to go undercover in the school to uncover a complicated ring of steroid use that even has links to a mafia family! The series is really starting to show it's thin blood with this entry as the undercover mercenary school teacher is starting to get old. Original writers Roy Frumkes and Rocco Simonelli bring in new mercenary friends to help Treat Williams out in order to liven up the film a bit and they also change the environment a bit from the gang ridden high school into a high class college. Even with these changes the film still acts tired, like it's struggling to show anything new. Treat Williams is still likable as the lethal yet tongue-in-cheek funny mercenary turned substitute but the rest of the cast is filled with stock B-movie direct-to-video actors. The worst actors are definitely the college football players as mixed with by-the-numbers writing make very silly, unrealistic jocks that act more like immature high school students. This entry also suffers from what looks like the lowest budget of the franchise so far and the film's look reeks of "DTV" camera work. This sequel, like the previous films, can be overly preachy again especially about how "steroids are bad for you." I'm sorry but steroid abuse doesn't strike the same heart chord as troubled youth in gangs. The Substitute 3 isn't completely worthless and it's worth a look for people that liked the first two films but it's nothing new and the franchise is definitely on its last leg. The franchise marched on and Treat Williams would take the job as "the substitute" one last time in the next entry The Substitute: Failure is Not an Option. Bonus Rant: The only way to get this film on DVD is in a double feature with the first Substitute film. What the hell? Why not make it a double feature with Substitute 2? That would make more sense to package it with another sequel. Even the new quadruple feature set I have still has Substitute 3 packaged on the same disc as the original. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/17/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

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      The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All

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      Critics Reviews

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      Caffeinated Clint Moviehole The Substitute series is great entertainment. Williams kicks ass! Rated: 3/5 Apr 19, 2008 Full Review Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com Rated: 2/5 Aug 11, 2005 Full Review Leon Wood Apollo Guide Rated: 30/100 Jan 1, 2000 Full Review Read all reviews

      Movie Info

      Synopsis Mercenary Karl Thomasson (Treat Williams) comes to Long Island to pass along a medal to his dead friend's daughter, college English teacher Nicole Stewart (Rebecca Staab). When Nicole is attacked by student football players who are afraid she might fail them, Karl acts as her substitute teacher to discover who was behind the beating. Investigating the campus, he learns that football coach Bill Braden (Scott Wilkinson) is giving his team steroids and will stop at nothing to achieve success.
      Director
      Richard Radler
      Producer
      Morrie Eisenman
      Screenwriter
      Roy Frumkes, Rocco Simonelli
      Production Co
      Lionsgate Films
      Rating
      R
      Genre
      Drama
      Original Language
      English
      Release Date (Streaming)
      Sep 1, 2012
      Runtime
      1h 27m
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