It is taking me a while to get around rating everyone who has read and rated my reviews. I will get ...
It is taking me a while to get around rating everyone who has read and rated my reviews. I will get around to it I promise, It just may take a little time.
Member since:03.10.2006
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The Movie
The real life coach (Ken) Carter made the news in 1999 for closing the Gym and banning any basketball activities because several of the students in his team were not doing well in the classroom. The reason he took drastic action was because all the students on the team signed contracts that they would meet a minimum criteria which encompassed all of their education, not just the basketball side of it.
Six years later in 2005 Samuel L Jackson steps into Carter's shoes for the movie where he transforms an unfit, uneducated, uncaring bunch of delinquent kids who won 4 basketball games the previous season into winners. Not only winners in terms of them being undefeated within their chosen sport, but also winners in that he instilled pride into what was until recently a mob of unruly kids.
Of course the kids initially are rubbed up the wrong way by his methods and this is essentially the meat of the story that we see in the 2 hour plus movie. We see him win them over, deal with various crisis and eventually make winners out of them. That last bit is not a spoiler, we know before we even put the disk in the player that this is going to be one of those feel good films that we have seen plenty of times before, and will probably see plenty more times in the future. But it isn't so much about the destination as it is about the journey to get there. So what is it like?
Pretty good is the answer to that question, although I have to say that the film does have its flaws, not least that the films subject and the way it goes about it is as clichéd as it can get. The reason that it falls into the pretty good category rather than the mediocre one falls solely to Samuel L Jackson. The guy oozes authority, his booming voice giving out speeches reminiscent of Jules Winnfield in pulp fiction, trying to make his flock not only better basketball players but better people too.
Obviously being a film about a basketball coach and his team there is a lot of basketball in the film, and if they are not playing the game then they are practising for it, however the director does break away from this on occasion in order to flesh out a few of our team which is done simply to allow us to empathise with them. These parts of the film, although necessary are sometimes weakly done and it is these portions that make the film drag where we find ourselves wishing we were back in the gym with Carter bellowing out his commands.
Some examples of these break away scenes are with one of the players called Kenyon (Rob Brown) who has a pregnant girlfriend Kyra (Ashanti). You can tell he doesn't really want her to have the baby and in the scenes that they have together it is made perfectly clear that they are poor and cannot afford much. But it all seems too perfectly put together in that both Kyra and Kenyon always seem to be saying we cannot afford this, and we cannot afford that in order to emphasise how poor they actually are. We also see Timo Cruz (Rick Gonzalez), who I think is the best supporting actor in the film. He is pulled into a world of drugs and crime with his cousin and goes through some really low moments, although even here I felt that this side story of getting involved with drugs was shoehorned in because that is what we, the audience, expect kids from those sorts of neighbourhoods to be getting involved in.
But don't get me wrong these scenes are not terrible, they do sometimes feel a little manufactured for the sake of the audience but at the same time they do allow us to empathise with the guys in the team and wish them to succeed, they are likeable kids.
Overall I did enjoy the movie, I am far from being a sporty person and you don't need to be a sports fanatic to watch it. I enjoyed the speeches from Samuel L and his badass way of going about things, even if I do think that some scenes that featured our team of players were a little manufactured it is a decent feel good movie, and we all like to feel good don't we?
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Production Year: 1976 - Drama - Director: Herbert Wise - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Brian Blessed, John Hurt, Derek Jacobi, Sian Phillips, David Robb, Patrick Stewart, Fiona Walker
Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
It's good that you don't need to be a sports fanatic to watch this one : ) Eleanor x
salem_witch 09.12.2007 04:19
Sounds like a decent film. I'll have to look out for it on Sky.
IzzyS 28.11.2007 11:07
Nice review. I was interested in seeing this, I guessed this is what the movie would be like, it sounds quite Hollywood-ised, if you know what I mean. Samuel is cool :-) it is nice to indulge in an uplifting movie once in a while!
Based on an incredible true story, Coach Carter is the inspirational account of ... more
controversial basketball coach Ken Carter (Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson), who received both high praise and staunch criticism when he made national news for a gy...
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