Coach Ken Carter (Samuel L. Jackson) has a reputation in his former high school as being one of the best ball players to play on it's court. So when he is asked to return to his former school and turn the team (whose previous record included all of four victories) into winners, he agrees, as long as he can do it his way. And it's that way, and the waves that his way churn up, that this movie is about.
The first thing Carter had his athletes do was sign a contract having them promise to keep their GPA at a 2.3, to wear ties on game days and to put in community service time. This alone caused several players to walk away, but those who stayed he worked with. It is quickly apparent that Carter's strictness isn't just an idle threat as he forces team member after team member to run more suicides and do more pushups than they could stand. And when Carter's own son, Damien (Robert Ri'chard), transfers schools to go to Richmond (instead of the classier private school he previously attended), Carter shows that even his son isn't above the extreme rigors of his training.
Their hard work quickly pays off, as not only do they start their new season without any losses, but the team starts to act just like that, a team. While a lot of the movie focuses on the students' time on the court, the main point is actually what happens when several of the students don't quite make the grade. As the team wins more and more games, their popularity grows and they become rock stars of the school, but this means nothing to Carter when he realizes how many students are failing. He locks up the gym and tells the players to go to the library.
Needless to say, this causes a lot of turmoil in the town because this forfeit is the Oiler's first loss of the season. When the school's principal approaches him, he can't believe how strongly she seems to believe that this season is going to be the highlight of these player's lives and how much she doesn't believe in their ability to graduate and/or go to college.
There are a couple of side stories in the movie that follow a few of the players. Cruz (Rick Gonzalez) is one of the players who leaves the team as soon as Carter shows up, but when the team starts winning, he does whatever he can to get back on the court. This particular kid's story focuses a lot on his time on the streets and his drug dealing tendencies. Meanwhile, Kenyon (Rob Brown) has recently found out that his girlfriend is pregnant. So not only does he have to worry about his game and his grades, but also what kind of future he might have trying to raise a kid by the time he graduates. In both cases, these two players can't help but look around at people close to them and see where they might end up if they don't try to change something.
There are a few special features in this release that are worth watching. I was particularly interested in "The Man Behind the Movie" which involves an interview with the real Ken Carter and several people from his team that year. With this featurette, we get to see what subtle differences there are between the movie and the real events. "Writing Coach Carter: The Two Man Game" is also interesting because it talks about the two people that worked on the script and the complications that arose during this part of the process. Another featurette also goes through the training that the actors had to go through in order to adequately perform in the games and practices seen in the movie.
While a solid, heartfelt movie with a lot of energy, all of the special features appear in standard definition and just don't look as good as I had hoped. The movie itself is crisp, but if you are looking to get a copy for the special features, you might want to find the DVD version instead.
