While trailers for Freedom Writers would have audiences believe the movie is the next Sister Act II (1993) the film’s predictable plot is unimportant compared to the issues dealt with, for both the students and their teacher.

Instead of glossing over the problems that the students have outside of school and solving everything in the course of one music montage, the film takes a more realistic view. The Freedom Writer’s Diary, a compilation of diaries from the real students at Woodrow Wilson High School, which was published in 1999, helped the film fearlessly delve into the world of gangs and violence on the streets of Los Angeles. The film opens with news clips about gangs and riots in Los Angeles and the words of one student talking about her first gang experiences: how she had to join a gang in order to survive in her neighborhood. "A war has been declared," Eva said.

The film shifts between the struggles of the students and the life of their teacher Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank). While students like Eva (April Lee Hernandez), Sindy (Jacklyn Ngan), and Andre (Mario) live separated by race and gang, Gruwell attempts to bring hope to their lives by valuing their opinions and fending off other people’s opinions of her "useless" students. Gruwell’s husband Scott (Patrick Dempsey), and her father (Scott Glenn) especially disapprove of her career. Gradually the students come to understand each other and take their lives into their own hands by refusing gang life and standing up for what they believe in.

Director and screenplay writer Richard LaGravenese uses the camera in an unremarkable way, making the focus of the movie the message in the script instead of the sweeping, artsy camera movements.
A hand-held camera was used when following the students’ lives to create a realistic and chaotic feel, and a traditional, steady camera followed Gruwell. Through the course of the film the camera techniques switched as the students gained control of their lives outside of school and Gruwell faced controversy with other teachers and problems at home.

In the same way the script is seamless. The students organically grow to respect Gruwell, themselves, and each other. Thought the script contains some minor annoyances such as Gruwell’s dorky ghetto phrases like "my badness," stick out, the writing is natural.

This film dominates over the watered down versions that have come before it like Sister Act II, The Mighty Ducks, and others. Freedom Writers is more than the usual under dog movie about under-valued students because it goes deeper into the real issues at hand.