Movie Review- Coach Carter

If you are looking for films to watch during Black History Month, you may want to revisit an older classic: Coach Carter. The film is based off of a true story about Coach Ken Carter who made headlines in 1999 for suspending players on his undefeated basketball team for not keeping up with their academic commitments.

This is a powerful movie about a man coaching at his old high school, which is currently filled with failing students, drugs, and gangs. In this movie, coach Kenny Ray Carter teaches young men on the basketball team to not only to become a great athletic team, but to become great men and students. Coach Carter’s main goal is to set his team up for success in their life after college. The school in the film, Richmond High, is known for being a very poorly funded school with a 50 percent graduation rate. Most of those graduates are women.

Through this, Coach Carter realized that something needed to be changed, so he decides to implement a contract for his players that gave them athletic and academic requirements that would set them up to graduate and get a chance at life ahead of high school.

At first, the players were unsatisfied with Carter’s philosophy, and some even went as far as leaving the team because they did not want to comply with the new rules. The players that stayed or came back, however, worked hard in and out of the school to excel through Coach Carter’s philosophy. They turned from a bunch of young men who wouldn’t listen during practice, to devoted and hardworking student athletes, which set them up for the possibility of academic and athletic success after high school.

 In the last game of their year, the team was in the first round of the playoffs, playing the best team in the state. They lost on a buzzer-beater finish. The players were devastated heading back to the locker room. Coach Carter entered the locker room shortly after in a calm manner, despite their season ending. In the the talk with the team he famously said, “What you achieved goes way beyond the win-loss column or what will be written on the front page of the sports column. What you achieved is that ever-elusive victory within.” Through this, he meant that his players learned how to become students, athletes, and well-respected men in the world. The players held their heads high realizing that they did create something special. Most people from this team went on to play college basketball and some earned degrees from their colleges. This shows how these kids changed their life around drastically.

This movie received many high-achieving awards, showing the impact that it had on the community. This taught kids who live in impoverished areas with minimal opportunities that there is still a way out, to change and become better than you ever imagined.

The film ends with the uplifting moral that even in difficult situation, there is always a way if you are willing to try.