If you are looking for a no-brain-action thriller, the new Polish film Lesson Plan (a.k.a Plan Lekcji) on Netflix is a perfect fit for you. The film boosts its action sequence without worrying about the plotline going straight to the drain. The film’s director ensures the audience is invested in its action sequences that come in out of nowhere every 5-minutes or so. The dialogue exchanged throughout the film by the protagonist with the characters is only about dropping catchphrases, and they come almost at the same rate as the action sequences.
Lesson Plan rules out the factors that make an action thriller enticing but stretches them out with high-speed camera movements and loud rap songs accompanying them. Even with all that keeps happening on screen, the film is as bland as they come. It proves that the writers and directors had no intention of paying attention to storytelling or putting together a piece related to high school students getting involved with harmful drugs.
Directed by Daniel Markowicz, Daniel Bernardi and Jan Kuznik adapt the screenplay. Lesson Plan stars Piotr Witkowski, Jan Wieczorkowski, and Antonina Jarnuszkiewicz. The gritty action thriller is only 99 minutes and centers around a former cop who takes up a job at a school to find out the drug gang involved in killing his best friend.
In this article, I explored the plot of the film in detail while also discussing the film’s ending. Spoiler alert, kindly read at your discretion.
Lesson Plan Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
The film’s plot is laid out straightforwardly, where a drug dealer has gotten the hold of high school students. He has been selling drugs in school, with young children falling deep into the trap of getting addicted to the new pills.
Simultaneously we are also introduced to Damian Nowicki, who has been an undercover cop in the drug ring on the other side. However, the ring supervisor learns about him after his identity is leaked. He finds out where he lives and kills his wife.
Learning about this, Damian kills the supervisor and leaves the police force, isolating himself in the house. Drowning himself in sadness and loneliness, he becomes an alcoholic.
However, one day his estranged friend calls him up, asking for help. When one of his students in the school he has been teaching dies of an overdose, Szymon wants to investigate the matter with Damian. After cleaning himself well, Damian visits his friend, whom he has never met since his wife’s death.
Later after the dinner, the two old friends catch up on the situation, where Szymon wants to know if he can help him investigate. While the two are talking, Kamil (Szymon’s teenage son) overhears their conversation, where the former cop tells his friend that he can’t help since he can’t save himself from his present life.
Seeing his friend not keen to take up his previous role, Szymon takes the matter into his hands and sneaks out of his house one night to visit a warehouse where he suspects the drugs are produced. However, he gets killed, and the gang members stage him as the culprit behind the nuisance.
Later in the news, Damian learns that his friend is murdered and blamed for being the person peddling drugs to the school kids. On the one hand, Szymon’s wife and son are devastated by the new turn in their life; at the same time, Damian cannot live this lie.
He then takes up a job at the same school where Szymon was a history teacher. With the hope of discovering the truth behind who killed his dear friend, Damian starts a new life as the new history teacher in the school that is supposedly the center for all drug dealings.
How does Damian plan to discover the culprits behind the drug circulation in the school?
When Damian comes for the school’s history teacher job interview, the principal’s assistant tries to discourage him from taking the job. She tells him there are other more promising schools to apply to that will give him better remuneration with a safe environment than this school.
However, the principal intervenes in their conversation, calls Damian to his office, and discusses the role he would be responsible for in the school. He also introduces Damian to polish teacher Agata, who further introduces him to other teachers. Damian also gets acquainted with Chmielski, the head of a security agency hired to take care of things at school in adverse situations.
The school has been facing issues with children behaving irritably and irresponsibly. The kids have access to drugs from the peddlers within the school premises. Thus, the school has hired private security agents to minimize the threats and dealing on the property, ensuring children don’t have any access to illegal substances. However, the institution has not found the tactic very effective, leading to more students falling into the dark world of drug abuse.
On the one hand, academically bright student Jasiek succumbs to drug problems and starts peddling drugs to other students. At the same time, Damian begins his role as a history teacher; however, nobody takes him seriously.
On his first day, Damian gets into a heated exchange with a dropout student popularly called ‘Frogface.’ Agata intervenes and quickly asks Chmielski to detain Frogface and search for any drugs. However, later in the evening, Frogface attacks Agata with his pals in the school parking lot. He even slashes Damian’s car tire to get revenge on him for insulting him earlier in the class.
Damian comes to Agata’s rescue and fights the attackers throwing punches, smashing and dropping them on their faces to the ground like a pro wrestler. Agata gets smitten by Damian’s good looks and macho-ness and invites him on a date.
Quickly, we see the two having a good time at a bar; however, Damian somehow gets into a fight with two men disturbing young girls. Damian gets a cue to flaunt his exceptional skills to save people from a heated situation. While dropping Agata at her place, she invites him into the house, and the two enter her apartment, passionately kissing one another.
As Agata takes a moment to freshen up, Damian recalls the face of his deceased wife, who he loved so much. Thinking about her and getting involved with Agata makes him leave the apartment.
Agata, on the other hand, feels bitter about leaving her like that. Hence, Agata tries to limit her relationship to professional chords whenever she sees Damian.
Meanwhile, Damian’s students are overly impressed with their teacher’s superpowers. They wish to know more about him and learn how to defend themselves from their bullies. Damian finds this moment a golden opportunity, so he sets up a training camp in a basement and teaches them various self-defense methods.
Soon people get to know about this teacher-student setup, and four masked men show up at the site once the students get off their training. As predicted, Damian single handily beats all of them.
The following day, Damian notices that all the private security personnel have blow marks on their face making it evident that they were the ones who came to assault him the previous day.
Although Damian is still ambiguous about who has been peddling drugs to the students, as an audience, we understand that Chmielski is the one supplying drugs to the dealers and is also not comfortable with Damian’s presence in the school.
Chmielski plans to bring Damian down with the help of Jasiek and appoints Emilia to frame the new teacher for sexually harassing her. Since Emilia has a history of drug abuse, she has been clean for a while now. Jasiek manipulates her easily by threatening to hurt her father if she doesn’t agree to help them fire the teacher.
Agreeing on the goon’s terms, Emilia reports to the principal about how her history teacher sexually molested her after their training session. Damian gets suspended from his job and is asked to be away from the school premises. Emilia, again in the meantime, gets addicted to fentanyl.
Damian soon learns that the drugs are made inside the school chemistry lab. He tries to share this information with Agata, but she is upset with his lies and behavior and is unwilling to participate in anything with him. Upon visiting her place, Damian steals the school’s keys from Agata and enters the building to find out where the drugs are made and kept. He also finds out that the chemistry teacher Stefan has been making drugs all this time.
To avoid getting questioned about his investigation, Damian takes photographs of the vans that take drugs away from the school compound. The next day, he informs about his findings to Agata who shares the same with the school principal. When Zamoyski calls the chemistry teacher, the latter denies all the accusations, and the school authorities gradually turn down Damian’s findings.
Later, we see Damian checking the school security camera footage and finding out the truth is wiped out. He patiently waits for things to turn to his side, and soon we see Emilia sharing her truth with Agata, the principal, and her classmates. Damian gets support from his student as they assemble all together at the training arena and promise to be helpful in every means required to take down the goons.
Lesson Plan Movie Ending, Explained:
Who is the leader of the drug gang?
In the meantime, Agata forgives Damian after learning the entire truth, and the two share an intimate moment. She helps him with a note that Szymon left in his locker that entails the location of the drugs inside a warehouse. Shortly after, we discover that Szymon visited this location multiple times and was trying to plan on catching the drug gang.
Damian soon heads to the place with Agata, and the film, at this point, brings out the real perpetrators.
When they confront the chemistry teacher Stefan about the truth, Chmielski comes on a motorbike and shoots Stefan dead, giving a villainous look at Damian. We now know that Chmielski had been one of the gang members involved in the drug peddling in the school. Seeing how things have turned upside down, the gang leader reveals himself, and the school principal – Zamoyski, comes out as the one who is behind it all.
Zamoyski takes Agata hostage and threatens Damian to drop everything. However, his students appear one at a time, which leads one of the teens from the drug gang to realize which side is good and evil. Damian not only becomes a good fighter, fighting the goons to the very end, but he also becomes a great life coach to all his students as they realize the trap they were in earlier.
On the other hand, Emilia is in a coma as her friends visit her in the hospital. It seems she gained her consciousness of doing the right thing as she informed everyone about the heinous crime the principal had been doing all this time. It also helps change the perspective of other students who eventually comes to help Damian at the warehouse.
While the young kids fight with the evil group, Damian challenges Chmielski and defeats him. He runs after Zamoyski, who tries to explain his deeds. He shares that he has only been giving the disobedient students what they deserve – cheap drugs and sex. As Damian takes Zamoyski down, he gets shot in the shoulder. Assuming he killed Damian, he rejoices, but Kamil throws piles of porcelain toys on the principal, thus bringing the drug lord down.
Soon the police arrive and arrest all the evil men, and Damian gives Kamil his father’s wristwatch as a fatherly gesture. In the end, both Kamil and Damian avenge the death of their father and best friend’s death, as Damian wipes out the existence of the other drug lords from the country.
