Coach Carter

Coach Carter (2005) is about a high school basketball coach locking the gym while his team is undefeated, and it happened. Ken Carter returns to coach at his old school in Richmond. The first thing he does is have the players sign a contract: they will hold a certain grade average, attend classes, and wear a jacket to games. The team starts winning. Then he asks for the grade reports and finds the contract is not being kept. He locks the gym and forfeits every game. With the team undefeated. The town turns on him. Parents, the school board and the local press are against him, and the objection is simple: basketball is these boys' only chance. Carter's answer is the whole idea of the film: how many of them will turn professional, and what happens to the rest. It happened in 1999 and became national news. The real Carter was worried about how many of them went to university, and he knew the numbers. Samuel L. Jackson stars. The film follows the sports template but looks for its victory in the classroom rather than the game; the result of the final match is deliberately not what you expect. Most of the cast genuinely play, and the game scenes use no doubles. It is long and some subplots weigh it down. It runs 136 minutes. Good for: sports drama, true events, and stories about education. Less good for: it is long, the message is delivered very plainly, and the subplots scatter it.