You get into it

Rating: 7/10 (11 November 2012)

Ken Carter(Jackson, applying his voice to delivering more motivational, inspirational speeches than you'd think they could fit into one movie... even at an excessive 127 minute running time not counting credits; at least it does tend to keep to a good pace) talks with his wife about the position as coach(and how inconvenient it is for him), and even without him saying, she knows he'll take it - I guess there's some positives to marrying The Seer. He asks the students to sign an academic contract with him, and promises if they maintain a certain average, he'll take them to victory in the State championship. Sprinkle your stock conflicts, clichés and subplots(a few of which seem to only be there because it actually happened... points for accuracy, sure, however, you need to properly set up and resolve them as well, that, or cut them, call poetic license if you must) of sports flicks(and as someone who isn't actually a fan of them, let me say that I enjoyed this, without it being redefining or fresh), sanitize it to After School Special levels(well, what do you expect from MTV?) and you have this predictable mix. Dialog is very Hollywood, and gets exposition-happy a little too often. The vernacular and characterizations are somewhere between what's realistic and what the most whitebread adults on Earth think African-American and Latino teenagers behave and talk like. And this is very big on discipline, no problem that it can't solve... an attitude that one should at least keep in check. On the plus side, this does have plenty of exciting basketball action, and they usually really are shooting when we see them do so, it doesn't cut to cover for them. This is well-cast and the acting is at times as impressive as the material allows. There is a lot of moderate language(as much as they could do on a PG-13) and brief bloody violence in this. The DVD comes with the two well-done featurettes Coach Carter: The man behind the movie(20 minutes long, with interviews with many of the real people), the 11 and a half minute Fast break at Richmond High(about the actors training), 12 minute of decent deleted scenes and the 4 and a half minute music video "Hope". I recommend this to any fan of the sub-genre. 7/10