Review of Coach Carter (2005) by Melvin W — 02 Feb 2013

Coach Ken Carter: l came to coach basketball players, and you became students. l came to teach boys, and you became men. .

"It begins on the street. It ends here.".

Coach Carter is a good sports movie, even though we've seen these type of stories played out in the same way countless times before and after this film. It still excels as we see all the predictable moments, all the "I'm not playing for this guy," all the "Coach I want back on the team," and all the adversity the players have to go through. The movie is what it's been labeled. It's inspirational and it's heartfelt. While, a lot of movies fail in trying to achieve this by working too hard, this one works too hard at trying to achieve that, but still manages to.

Ken Carter takes a high school basketball coaching job at a ghetto, "bad" school. The kids are undisciplined and don't care about school. They also are bad at basketball, having only won four games the previous year. Carter is there to change it all. He tells them the losing stops now. He tells them to either sign a contract stating you'll keep a 2.3 gpa, attend all your class, sit in the first row of all your classes, and wear a jacket and tie on game day. He makes them run endlessly to get them in shape and soon he has his team on track with an undefeated record into the middle of the year. But all that adversity is going to hit.

Samuel L. Jackson thrives in the role of Coach Carter. He looks the part and he sounds the part. I wouldn't call it his best performance or anything like that, but he is very good. The acting from everyone else, ummm.... I'll go with so, so. But the movie is called Coach Carter and thusly the fate of the film really rested on Jackson's shoulders and he was able to hold it up.

The movie has problems, most of them coming with the genre. Predictability, cliches, and heart tugging among them. Still, this is a better than average addition to the "Bad News Bears" type of story. Coach takes misfit riddled team and turns them into winners. Is it a masterpiece? Hell no. Is it bad? Hell no. I've seen it many times now and I still enjoy it. It's definitely a worthwhile film to watch if you haven't seen it yet. Try FX, it seems to be on that channel every other day.