Coach Carter – 3 stars (good)
Samuel L. Jackson stars as Coach Ken Carter in a good sports drama with an outstanding message for today’s high school basketball players who see playing with the pros as their only goal in life.
Coach Carter, a successful sporting goods store owner and once-star athlete, returns to his alma mater in poor Richmond, CA. He inherits a team with players who have bad attitudes, underachievers, and virtually no expectations for his future if they fail to advance their basketball careers. The Richmond High School team is designed for its student-athletes to fail by not requiring the highest expectations, discipline, and responsibility. Coach Carter is the centerpiece of this values film based on a true story of a California team.
He immediately lays down the law, Carter-style, demanding discipline, hard work, and responsibility. Carter and his players sign a written contract that requires standards of behavior, a dress code, and good grades to remain eligible to play. Carter believes that scholarship and ethics must go hand in hand with a great game of basketball.
Given a few standards to meet, their players do a 180-degree turn and start winning from the start of the season, going undefeated in multiple games. Then the community starts showering them with attention and praise and the players become overconfident and ignore their class attendance and studies. Carter discovers that several of his players are on the brink of failure and he takes immediate action, benching his team and shutting down the basketball program until the players measure up to their grades. You can imagine the reaction of parents and the community in general.
Coach Carter is under immense pressure to pass his players. He will likely become the only basketball coach in the United States to hold his own with an undefeated team. He adamantly refuses to budge, holding his players accountable for their performance both on and off the pitch.
This is an incredible story of a coach who will not compromise his values by not compromising his integrity. Coach Carter has the guts and the audacity to stand his ground and in the end he has the right will. Hear what Coach Carter has to say in his hearing with the board: “You really need to consider the message that you’re sending these guys by ending the lockout. It’s the same message that we as a culture send to our athletes.” professionals, and that is that they are above the law.
“If these guys can’t abide by the simple rules of a basketball contract, how long do you think it will be before they break the law?
“I played ball here at Richmond High 30 years ago. It was the same then; some of my teammates went to prison, some of them even ended up dead. If you vote to end the lockout, you won’t have to fire me, I’ll leave it”.
Powerful? You better believe it. Ignore the violence, sexual content, foul language, teen partying, and drug stuff in this movie, it’s just Hollywood’s goofy way of stereotyping high school basketball players. There is very little recognition in the movies for prep basketball players who are not only outstanding college and professional prospects, but also outstanding students with great character and values.
However, there are legacy players like Coach Carter, and this movie illustrates an important and necessary statement about what really matters. Coach Carter isn’t interested in winning games to advance his career; he is totally focused on developing young people into confident, productive and well-adjusted adults.
Fortunately, the Coach Carter movie enjoyed some success, generating the highest opening weekend ($24 million) of any MTV movie opening. There was little recognition for this film among the most prestigious awardees. No matter. It was an Academy Award message in its own right.
See this movie for its excellent message. And yes, take your children with you, they need the message even more than you do, now they are in the spotlight and you are behind it.
Copyright 2007 Ed Bagley