Well told story of a real coach who put academics ahead of sports.

Rating: Null/10 (9 July 2005)

I like Samuel Jackson, he is one of my favorite actors. And, I like inspiring true stories. Put both of those together, in a movie like "Coach Carter", and you have a great movie. Jackson is Coach Ken Carter who, 30 years earlier, had been the star basketball player at this very same California high school, and now had a profitable sporting goods business. He took the job reluctantly, for 4 months and $1500, because he wanted a little extra spending money to take his wife on vacation. But he took it only on one condition -- he would be allowed to do it his way. In his years since high school he knew the statistics -- only 50% of the students would graduate, only one in 6 would go to college, and 1 in 3 boys would end up in prison or dead. He wanted to make a difference, to change the statistics for these basketball players who only wanted to play ball and win.
Coach Carter, on his first day, requires all who want to play, to sign a contract. Maintain a 2.3 GPA, attend all classes, sit in the front row, and wear a coat and tie on game days. And -- learn to refer to each other and the coach as "sir." All quite a change in culture for these borderline ghetto students. Carter figured that unless they could develop a better self-discipline, and follow good rules, then they had no hope of following the rules of society and set personal goals to make something of themselves.
Rob Brown of "Finding Forrester" fame is one of the star players, Kenyon Stone, who has a side issue with his pregnant girlfriend Kyra (Ashanti). The DVD has an interesting extra featuring the real Coach Carter.
SPOILERS. Carter through pushups, "suicides" drills, and lots of outside running makes them the best conditioned team in the area, and uses a running offense to wear down the opponents. They go from poor losers the season before to almost unbeatable. But when Carter finds out that many of them were violating their contracts, skipping class, getting failing or incomplete grades, he locked the gym and canceled games. The parents and town rebeled, wanted Carter to quit, mandated unlocking the gym, but the team held together, refused to practice until all grades were in order, then they were invited to the championship tournament. A low seed, they were forced to play the best team in the state, almost winning, but losing in the final seconds by one point, still they had bonded as a team and understood the priorities in life better.