Coach Carter (DVD)

At first glance Coach Carter appeared as if it was going to be the Hoosiers of 2005, and while Hoosiers is a great film, often times when a movie tries to repeat a winning formula it usually loses the special something that made the original so great. On the contrary Coach Carter is its own beast and it is an amazing look at inner city life and a basketball team that truly inspires.

The film itself is inspired by the true life story of Ken Carter as he was hired to coach the Richmond High School basketball team, a team that won only four games the previous year. Carter employs boot camp tactics to his coaching style and makes sure the boys not only are skilled on the court, but off as well, holding them to contracts each one of them signed saying they would ensure their grades stay above a 2.3 GPA among other things.

As the season wears on and certain members of the team fail to uphold their ends of the contracts Carter goes into action and what comes next is just as inspiring as anything you saw in Hoosiers.

With such a great film you would expect great features and while this group of goodies is good there should have been more.

This is a role that was made for Sam Jackson and it was excellently directed by Thomas Carter (no relation to Ken Carter), which makes me wonder why there is no commentary track with the two men, or even a track getting together the actors that made up the team. Things like this should be written into contracts when an actor signs on to do a film now days!

As for what you do get there are a couple of good making-of featurettes mixing in reactions from the people whose lives were depicted on screen as well as the actors playing them, along with several members of the crew, which leads into another featurette focused on how they developed the fast paced basketball scenes. Storyboarded with animatics, each basketball scene was meticulously played out before even an inch of film was shot.

There is also a look at the life of the real Coach Carter as well as a large group of worthy deleted scenes, scenes that should not have made it into the film for pacing reasons, and the fact that it is already over two hours long, but they are worth checking out as they do tell a lot more story.

Finally there is a video with Twista featuring Faith Evans; can someone tell me when Faith lost all her weight? She is looking very good now days.

Overall, I would recommend this to anyone that loves sports movies, and who doesn't fit that mold? Sport movies take advantage of human nature as we always want to cheer for the underdog and Coach Carter uses that advantage to its fullest potential. This film is inspirational and uplifting as it mixes great acting, drama and basketball perfectly and is a worthy addition to anyone's DVD collection.