Coach Carter Details

Samuel L Jackson's barnstorming performance is the main reason to catch this solidly entertaining “true story”. He plays a high-school basketball coach who took the unheard of step of benching his players and jeopardising their shot at the state title when he discovered they were failing academically. This, needless to say, didn't sit at all well with the local community who valued sporting achievement above intellectual feats, or the students who would rather be on the court than in the classroom. The screenplay by Mark Schwahn and John Gatins is as much influenced by films about inspirational teachers turning students' lives around (such as Stand and Deliver and Dead Poets Society) as by sports movies, but all the usual ingredients are present, including the rousing locker-room speeches, coach/player face-offs and exhilarating basketball action. Clichéd it may be, but the movie is involving and well acted enough for us to forgive the fact that we've seen all this many times before.

Inspired by the life of Ken Carter, this sports movie, while following much the usual template for such films, does break convention with its insistence that athletic prowess at school will not necessarily bring success in adult life.