Coach Carter

In 1999, head basketball coach Ken Carter of Richmond High School in Richmond, California made national headlines for benching his undefeated team due to poor grades. This was a story that caused a great deal of dislike towards the coach but brought up the always important ideas of leadership, grades and that there is more to life than just basketball.  In 2005, the story of Ken Carter story turned into the movie "Coach Carter" starring Samuel L. Jackson and directed by Thomas Carter.

What this movie all boils down to is Samuel L. Jackson who is a great asset and who makes this film. He brings this attitude and temper of a hard guy but eventually a likable basketball coach that makes this film move and succeed. This is the type of character that people look up to because of the fact that he is trying to bring something positive to the life of teenagers even if he's a little hard on them during the process. Some might call it "tough love".

Another reason this story and film are so successful is due to the atmosphere of the setting of the movie, Richmond, California. Richmond is a rough area that nobody expects good basketball teams to come out of. People don't expect kids to get good grades with the graduation rate being so poor. Considering this, Ken Carter deserves even more credit for trying to accomplish something that would seem doubtful and highly unlikely.

As a person who loves basketball and has followed the NBA for years, I especially should have loved Coach Carter due to the basketball theme. Well the basketball scenes aren't bad and are set-up ok but they are generic and very unrealistic. We can see where most of these scenes are going as we go along. We also don't know much about the players or who they are which is common in sport films and the ending is predictable. If this film improved the basketball scenes and added something there, who knows how good this could have been.

Coach Carter works the motivation angle pretty well but falls off from there. In the end, this is a sports story which you should probably skip because you have seen all this before. This likely will  be one of the forgotten films of Samuel L. Jackson career and rightfully so.

3/5