It has been done a million times and this won't be the last time the "teacher, student, rebel," mechanism will be tried. Take one recluse (Sean Connery) and an aspiring under privileged student (Rob Brown VI) to cancel out a dysfunctional environment. They even have a common nasty antagonist (F. Murray Abraham) to pick on.
Predictability is not the problem. It starts out so noisy that you will have to turn the sound off for the first five minutes. Everything from the story to the environment to the camera shots is mediocre. Anything that may have been of use for writing or refereed to writing is glossed over with music or faded out. You can be assured this movie has nothing to do with writing other than hitting the (typewriter) keys hard enough. The characters (not that the actors did not try) had no depth. Too many things were inferred from obscure camera shots. You get the picture.