The new Polish action thriller film on Netflix, “Lesson Plan,” or “Plan Lekcji” in Polish, is more interested in making its protagonist fight bad guys than in creating any substantial plot. It presents ex-policeman Damian embarking on a secret mission to avenge the death of his friend and throws in expected and easy-to-guess twists and revelations. Overall, “Lesson Plan” is watchable for the fight sequences only if one is looking solely for an action-filled watch, but there’s no harm in avoiding it either.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Lesson Plan’ Plot Summary: What Is The Film About?
Szymon Makowiecki, a history teacher at a high school, is extremely concerned about his students as a rampaging addiction to drugs has been holding a tight grip over the place. Someone close to the school area has been selling fentanyl to students and getting them hooked on the extremely addictive synthetic drug, and Szymon even receives news of a student’s death from an overdose. Knowing that he alone cannot do anything, he calls up his close friend Damian Nowicki after a long time to ask for help. Damian, who used to be a police officer until some time ago, has been out of touch ever since the tragic death of his wife. At the time, Damian had been working as an undercover police agent inside one of the leading drug gangs in Poland, but his personal information had somehow leaked out to them. Although Damian had successfully arrested the leader and brought the gang to an end, the price he had to pay in exchange was the life of his dear wife. By the time Damian could rush home, the gang had gotten her murdered. The man had left the police force after this and grown extremely disillusioned about life and relationships. He maintains this temperament even when Szymon gets in touch with him and says that he cannot provide any help. However, only a few days later, police find Szymon’s body inside a warehouse, and the scene has been set in a manner to suggest that Szymon had been the leader of the new gang selling fentanyl and had committed suicide for some reason. While Damian had remained disinterested earlier, he could no longer live with such a lie. Both Szymon’s wife and teenage son, Kamil, are devastated by this murder, and Damian now decides to step back into action. Aided by his past colleagues at the police force, Damian Nowicki takes up the job as the new history teacher at the same high school, which is at the center of a drug ring.
How Does Damian Find Out The Real Perpetrators Of The Crime?
On the very day of his appointment with the school principal, the working staff at the place try to discourage Damian from taking up the job. But as he continues with the plan, Damian makes acquaintance with the Polish teacher Agata, the chemistry teacher Stefan, and some of the other teachers and colleagues. He is also soon introduced to a man named Chmielski, who is the leader of the private security agency that has been hired to keep things under control inside the school. The school needs such protection due to the general unlawful behavior of some of the students, as Damian himself is introduced to one such young man named Jasiek. Despite having been academically bright, Jasiek had succumbed to his drug addiction and has now started to peddle drugs inside the school campus. Such is the protection and support this drug gang provides that the school authorities have given up trying to stop the sellers and peddlers and instead want to cut off the very source of the drugs. Although the students pay no attention to the new teacher, Damian, the man gradually gains popularity after an incident with a dropout known as Frogface. After an altercation during class, Frogface attacks Agata that evening in the parking lot, and it is Damian who intervenes. Showing off his exceptional skills in hand-to-hand combat, he beats up the attackers, rescuing Agata from the situation. Agata immediately grows an attraction towards the man and expresses her interest in every situation since this. The two go out on a date, and it leads to the potential of them spending an intimate night together, but Damian stops himself at the very last minute when memories of his dead wife come rushing to him. It has been evident that the man is still unable to get over the loss of his partner, and he now leaves Agata’s house without any notice. The woman understandably grows bitter towards Damian, as she cannot understand why he has behaved in such a manner, and she keeps her relationship with him limited to the professional boundaries at school.
Meanwhile, news of Damian’s fight had spread in the school, and the students were rather impressed by their new teacher’s abilities. They keep expressing their wish to know more about it all, and Damian realizes that this would be a good opportunity to teach the teenagers self-defense skills, as they were often hounded by drug sellers and goons. Together with some of these students, he sets up a training arena and gives them various lessons related to self-defense on a regular basis. Although Kamil had been initially extremely angry with Damian for having ignored his father’s plea for help, the boy gradually understood, and he, too, then joined Damian’s training sessions. Word gets out about this setup too, and soon a group of masked men shows up at the arena after the students have left. Damian once again single-handedly beats them up, although he himself takes blows as well. The next day, when he reports to school, Damian notices that almost all the private security personnel have marks of a beating on their faces, making it almost clear that they were the ones who had masked up and gone to assault him the previous day. Although Damian is unaware of this so far, this suspicion of his has already been confirmed to us viewers, as the leader of this agency, Chmielski, has been shown as the one supplying the drugs to the peddler kids and the one who is forcing the students to indulge in drug use. He now makes a tighter plan to bring Damian down with the help of Jasiek and appoints one of Damian’s students by the name of Emilia. The young girl had once been addicted to hard drugs but had made a conscious attempt to stay clear of them for some time. Jasiek and his goons approach her and tell her to agree to their plan and cooperate or else see her father get beaten up by them, and Emilia finally succumbs. The next day at school, she informs the principal and the other teachers that Damian had sexually molested her at his training arena after the session.
While Damian is immediately suspended from his job and is forced away from the school premises, Emilia cannot help but get addicted to fentanyl again. He visits her house to learn the truth and then also learns from Frogface that the drug was not being brought into the school but was rather being made inside the premises. Damian tries to tell Agata how he had been framed by Emilia’s lie, but the woman is unwilling to hear at all, and he goes away from her house, taking her copy of the school’s keys. Damian now enters the school building and sees drugs being taken away from the place. He also manages to take a look at the man making the drugs, and this is the chemistry teacher Stefan himself. He cannot take any photos of the man, though, as that would compromise his stealth, and instead photographs a few of the vans that are taking the drugs away from the compound. The next day he returns to the school and informs principal Zamoyski about all his findings, and the chemistry teacher is also called into the scene. While the latter denies any such involvement, Damian is turned away by the authorities once again, making his suspicions all the more evident. This particular matter makes it almost evident that there is someone higher in authority than Chmielski too, and it takes away from any surprise when “Lesson Plan” reveals so a little later. Meanwhile, Damian goes through the security camera footage of the school premises too and finds that it has been wiped clean. He has to wait some time for things to turn in his favor, but they eventually do when Emilia tells the truth about her lie to Agata, her school principal, and her classmates. The students return to Damian’s training arena, promising to help him in every way they can, and Agata also makes amends with him, so the two finally get intimate. She also helps Damian get hold of a secret note that Szymon had left behind in his locker, and this is of great help as it shows the exact location of the drugs inside the warehouse. Although we see Szymon visit the warehouse only once, on the day that he is killed, it becomes clear that he had been visiting the place often, trying to somehow hatch a plan against the drug gang. Damian now heads to the place accompanied by Agata, and it is here that the real perpetrators come out in the open. The two had earlier visited the chemistry teacher Stefan, but just as the man was about to say something, Chmielski rolled into the place on his motorbike, shot Stefan dead, and then gave intensely threatening looks to Damian. While this had confirmed Chmielski as one of the main members of the gang, it is now at the warehouse that the leader of the gang reveals himself—principal Zamoyski.
‘Lesson Plan’ Ending Explained: Does Damian Avenge The Death Of Szymon At The End?
Zamoyski and his gang members now take Agata hostage, posing a huge threat to Damian, when suddenly, his students start to appear one by one. Leading this students’ force is one of the teenagers who had earlier been working for the drug gang but had now realized which side was good and had shifted accordingly. Along with how everything else in the film ends, this ability of Damian to be not just a good fighter but a great life teacher is hailed as a big positive. Emilia cannot be present, though, as she is most probably assaulted by principal Zamoyski, as she was last seen confessing to the man that she had lied about Damian. The crook had realized that she needed to be silenced and had hurt her, but he had not considered the fact that she might have told everyone else about it before confessing to him. Another possibility for Emilia’s situation might be due to her suddenly stopping to take the fentanyl drug, which might have caused a reaction in her body. Either way, Emilia stays in the hospital in a postoperative coma while the rest of her friends rush to the warehouse to help Damian.
As the youngsters from both sides fight each other, Damian takes on Chmielski and ultimately defeats him. Next, he rushes towards Zamoyski, who tries to portray himself as an evil drug lord who is only giving the disobedient students what they want—cheap drugs and sex resulting from them. Although Damian takes the principal down, Zamoyski pulls out a gun and shoots Damian in the shoulder. For a moment, it seems like he might kill Damian, but such doubts are quashed when Kamil showers Zamoyski with porcelain toys, bringing the drug kingpin down. As the police arrive and arrest Zamoyski and the rest of his men, Damian gives Kamil the wristwatch that Szymon used to wear. By the end, both Damian and Kamil are able to exact revenge for the deaths of their friend and father, respectively, and Damian manages to wipe out one more drug gang from existence in Poland.
“Lesson Plan” is a 2022 Drama Action film directed by Daniel Markowicz.
