The poster image promoting Memphis millionaire Bob Compton's latest movie-with-a-message is fanciful but dramatic: A teacher's red apple with a sparking dynamite fuse for a stem.

''Two Million Minutes: The 21st Century Solution,'' from Memphis venture capitalist Bob Compton, bases its hopes in the example of the acclaimed BASIS Charter School of Tucson, Ariz.True South Studios

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The slogan on the poster is similarly alarming: "Education's Final Exam."

The movie is "Two Million Minutes: The 21st Century Solution," and its world premiere tonight in Washington will be attended by politicians, educators, economists, corporate executives and pundits, rather than the red-carpet show business celebrities one associates with typical film unveilings.

The documentary makes its local debut a week from tonight, at 7 p.m. at the Malco Paradiso, 584 S. Mendenhall. A question-and-answer session will follow the screening.

"Two Million Minutes: The 21st Century Solution" is -- like its 2007 predecessor, "Two Million Minutes: A Global Examination" -- an example of what might be called advocacy cinema.

The hourlong movie's portrait of student and teacher life inside the acclaimed BASIS Charter School of Tucson, Ariz., is meant to be entertaining, but mostly it is meant to inspire educational reform.

Oops, let's amend that last sentence: "I don't even talk about education reform any more," Compton said. "I talk about education revolution."

Compton hopes viewers of his new movie nationwide will insist -- no, demand -- a comparable level of achievement and accountability in their own public schools. If that doesn't happen, he believes America will fall behind India, China and other competitors in the high-tech global marketplace of the future. As Lisa Graham Keegan, former Arizona superintendent of public

instruction, says in the film: "Our ability to survive is absolutely, inexorably tied to our education level."

Keegan was an education adviser to Sen. John McCain during his presidential campaign and a vice chairman of the Republican platform committee in 2008, but Compton wants his new film -- like "A Global Examination," which he screened for both McCain and Barack Obama -- to reach everybody, whatever the political affiliation.

"This is geared to the American people," Compton said. That's why tonight's screening at The Theater at the National Housing Center at the National Association of Home Builders in Washington is being hosted by a pair who operate at opposite ends of the political spectrum: former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton.

"It's fair to say speaker Gingrich and Rev. Sharpton probably differ on everything, including the time of day, but the one thing they are united on is that our children are in serious jeopardy," said Compton, 53, the father of two teenage girls. (He likes to say that while the teachers' unions are very powerful, "there is no children's union.")

If "Two Million Minutes: A Global Examination" diagnosed a problem (American students aren't getting enough science and math education to compete with their international rivals), "Two Million Minutes: The 21st Century Solution" provides hope through the example of the BASIS Charter School of Tucson (as well as its sister school in Scottsdale), a 10-year-old public school that offers "the depth and rigor of the European and Asian college prep schools with the expansiveness of the American curriculum and the openness of the American classroom," according to its Web site.

The school, which serves grades 5-12, was ranked No. 1 in 2008 in Newsweek magazine's list of the "Top 1,200 High Schools," and No. 5 in 2009. BASIS stands for Builds Academic Success in Schools.

A Germantown resident, Harvard Business School graduate and successful venture capitalist, Compton spent close to $500,000 in production and travel costs on the first "Two Million Minutes" film, which he said has been seen by more than 100,000 people at screenings and has sold about 20,000 copies on DVD. The movie and Compton's mission earned reports in USA Today, U.S. News & World Report and on ABC's "Good Morning America," among other news outlets.

Compton followed his first film with a pair of supplementary documentaries, "Two Million Minutes in China" and "Two Million Minutes in India," which focused in greater depth on what Compton believes are the superior education systems in America's two competing superpowers. (All the movies are available for purchase on DVD at 2mminutes.com, as is the new film.) The "Two Million Minutes" phrase refers to the amount of time that passes from eighth grade until high school graduation.

Critics have accused Compton of oversimplifying the different problems facing American and Asian educators and ignoring the cultural gulf between the U.S. and Asia, but Compton says the Arizona charter schools demonstrate that a free public education can compete with the best in the world, if the staff and students dedicate themselves to achievement, even when the children come from a non-affluent population. (According to a report by the Children's Action Alliance in Arizona, children are "in crisis" in Pima County, where Tucson is located, because of increasing poverty, homelessness, teen pregnancy and other factors that may seem familiar to Memphians.)

The success of the first documentary emboldened Compton to found True South Studios, a multimedia company expected to produce commercial narrative films as well as documentaries.

Dan Treharne, 26, is chief creative officer for True South and the director of "Two Million Minutes: The 21st Century Solution." A 2001 graduate of White Station High School and recent graduate of the University of Southern California, where he earned a master's degree in film and video production, Treharne and director of photography Medeni Griffiths, a friend from USC film school, essentially worked as a two-person crew, shooting the movie during three weeks this year, mostly in February.

Treharne said he is no education expert, so he is as interested in the "characters" -- the students and teachers -- as the issues.

"I would say this film is more artistic," Compton said. "Dan is a director coming fresh out of film school, he brings a different artistic sentiment where my previous director (Chad Heeter) was a pure documentarian. It probably has more of a narrative feel -- more of a big-screen experience and less a PBS sort of experience."

However artistic the film may be, the message is the key. "If we don't take control of our schools," Compton said, "we are condemning our children to a life of struggle and declining standards of living, and that's not the life I want to give my children."

'Two Million Minutes: The 21st Century Solution'

The Memphis screening is at 7 p.m. Sept. 24, at the Malco Paradiso, 584 South Mendenhall. Hosted by Bob Compton and Dan Treharne, who will answer questions after the film. Tickets: $7. Available at the door or in advance by calling (888) 705-5324.

DVD of the film available at 2mminutes.com.