'Hoosiers' meets 'Stand and Deliver'

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2005)

Sports films always at least have the advantage that artificial drama can always be conjured up from the uncertainty of the outcome of a particular sporting event. Films set in under-privileged neighbourhoods have the advantage that they are able to show us that there is good in all of us and we can overcome adversity, if only we try hard enough.
Films that are both set in the ghetto and about sporting endeavour have, thus, two advantages. 'Coach Carter' milks its two advantages and turns out to be a highly entertaining, if unoriginal, pot-boiler. Jackson is fine as the tough-nut 'made good' former street kid given the job of beating a bunch of apparent no-hoper school basketball players into shape. We get all of the social stuff... drugs, unwanted pregnancies, academic under-achievement. That's par for the course.
We also get some excellent sidebar characters, like a realist head-mistress who turns idealist, and a massively over-weight mother who dominates her tough-nut son.
The film is, finally, just an amalgam of 'Hoosiers' (1986) and 'Stand and Deliver' (1988) - both substantially superior films. It is, however, worth the price of admission for the ride.