Coach Carter (2005)
Directed by Thomas Carter
Written by Mark Schwan, John Gatins
Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Channing Tatum, Rob Brown
Release Date January 14th, 2005
Published January 13th, 2005
In 1999, Richmond High School's basketball coach, Ken Carter, made national headlines by doing something unheard of from an inner-city school. Locking up his gym and cancelling games, Coach Carter required his student athletes to actually be students. I can recall remarking at the time that there was no doubt this story would become a movie and, five years later, that movie has arrived.
Watered down to the mainstream, easy-listening pace of a Hollywood feature, Coach Carter gains resonance and drama thanks to its casting of the amazing Samuel L. Jackson.
When Ken Carter returned to his alma mater, Richmond High School, in the ghettos of Richmond, California, he found a run-down, raggedy basketball team with the discipline of a street gang. Coming out of a 4 and 20 season, the teams' prospects looked no brighter for the new season. That will change under Coach Carter's leadership. With his imposing presence, booming voice, and willingness to allow the teams' best players to quit if they won't follow orders, Coach Carter knows how to take control.
Carter's first act as head coach is to make the players sign an agreement that requires a grade point average higher than the high school standard. The players are also required to wear ties on game day and sit in the front of the classrom. That is not the least of his demands. On the court, Coach Carter runs his team through the floor, teaching them the fundamentals that most of the players had never learned.
With such a large cast, the players don't resonate much as characters. Most simply fit character types that seem diverse when taken as a whole. There is the clown (Antwon Tanner), the white kid (Channing Tatum), and the coach's own son (Robert Ri'chard), who earns his place on the team by promising to work twice as hard. There is also the troubled kid (Rick Gonzalez), whose involvement with drugs and gangs serves as the example of what the kids are striving to avoid.
The one player in Coach Carter who makes an impact is played by Rob Brown, the impressive young actor from 2000's Finding Forrester, whose natural talent is to seem as if he is not acting at all. Brown is truly awesome; his presence dominates even when his character is silent. Brown is involved in the films' most controversial subplot, a high school pregnancy with pop-star Ashanti, who makes an impressive film debut. The subplot is controversial for its results and its unique treatment, but I felt responsibly portrayed and especially well-acted by these two superior young actors.
Coach Carter was directed by television veteran Thomas Carter, no relation to the Coach, who distinguishes this cliched sports-movie premise, uplifting after-school-special kind of stuff, by casting the brilliant Samuel L. Jackson. The casting of someone with Jackson's star power and presence sells the uplifting and potentially sappy elements of the plot.
Jackson is aided greatly by a surprisingly good script by John Gatins and Mark Schwahn, though they were likely assisted by the on-set involvement of the real Coach Ken Carter, whose "No B.S." approach I'm sure was a guiding influence. What makes this story so much more interesting and intelligent than most movies of its genre is the serious way it treats its academic storyline. Yes, the basketball scenes are well shot, but the impressive part is the seriousness of its true subject, the importance of an education.\
Unlike the cowardly Friday Night Lights, a movie that shunned the frightening sociology behind its football story, Coach Carter takes its sociological underpinnings head on. The film tackles, at times indirectly, the psychological, economical and social pressures that cause young black men to lose hope and give in to the lures of easy money by selling drugs.
Coach Carter's one-man-against-the-world approach does at times appear comical. It takes a little while for us to understand why the community rises up against the coach, who's simply trying to make sure their children get educated. Eventually, you do understand, which deepens the sadness and drama that help the film earn its uplifting sports-movie ending.
Coach Carter is not perfect--it has the mainstream, feel-good tone that is the hallmark of both MTV Films and Producers Brian Robbins and Michael Tollin. But, the film also has Samuel L. Jackson, who after drifting through a series of dreadful roles in films like Twisted, Formula 51 and No Good Deed, is back in "badass" form. It is Jackson's performance that makes the feel-good approach not feel either false or sappy. His presence, his dramatic weight and, best of all, that booming 'basso profundo' sell this piece as more than just another sports movie.
