Sociological studies show that society has a tenancy of painting groups into corners. They show that teenagers excel based on where they stand on a social ladder. The kids of Richmond High are young and black; they live in a violent neighborhood that is occupied by drugs and gangs; these kids are designed, as some would have it, to fail. But there is a way out. The education system is designed to provide students with the skills in order to find their escape route. Yet the system has failed the students of Richmond Hill High School. A mere fifty percent are expected to graduate, twenty percent of those will go to college, the other eighty will be released to prison, some may not even live to see a graduation ceremony.

In a system that doesn’t believe in them, all these kids have is basketball. Actor Michael Clark Duncan once told David Letterman that the movies may have saved his life. Keeping his priorities high and staying away from drugs, alcohol, and violence allowed him to escape. Basketball may be saving the lives of the players at Richmond Hill, but without goals set by a system designed to help them, their future ceases to exist outside of the court.

Coach Carter continues a recent tradition in that every good sports movie comes with a true story to tell. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a character is just a description on paper, a real person comes with their story already waiting to be told. Ken Carter, like Albert Brooks of Miracle and Gary Gains of Friday Night Lights, is a coach with a strategy in a film that cares about it. The film is a sports flick through and through with a built in formula ready to take charge whenever it need be, but it also sidesteps the typical underdog story; it doesn’t care as much about how games are won, as how lives are lost.

Samuel L. Jackson plays Carter as a man who knows the game of basketball, but also knows that the game is simply that; if all a student has in his life is basketball, life is not saved, it’s shortchanged. So Carter makes the team sign a contract that states that they will retain a 2.3 grade point average, attend every class, sit in the front seat of every class, and wear a tie on game day. What Jackson brings to the character is a delicate blend of street smarts and professionalism. On the first day he announces to his students that he will treat them with respect until they provide him reason not to, and when a student takes a swing at him after being asked to leave the gym, Carter puts him against the wall. “Teachers aren’t allowed to touch students,” says the kid. “I’m not a teacher,” replies Carter. “I’m the new basketball coach.”

What Carter does is not a lot different in strategy than what Brooks did: he works the students to the bone and when he feels that they have had enough, he works them even harder. He is stern with them, but understanding with them as players, and as a result leads the team to an undefeated winning streak; a slight step up from the four wins from the previous year.

Where the opinion of the students and that of Carter’s begins to differ is that they are naive and believe that success stops at winning. Carter knows better and after he finds out that most of his students have failed to meet their contractual agreement, he puts a lock on the gym and cancels all games and practices until the contract can be met. Director Thomas Carter (no relation) does a delicate balancing act here; he has the ambition for a formula picture and achieves that, but has the reach to use the formula to his benefit. He knows that the heart of his story doesn’t lie in the scenes in which Carter coaches the boys to a win, but how he teaches them to put grades above scores or they will never make it to college and most likely end up in prison.

On the other hand, Coach Carter is an MTV production and therefore made for teenaged audiences by including unnecessary subplots involving gang violence and teen pregnancy. Of course that isn’t fair, MTV has released good films in the past, Better Luck Tomorrow for example, and if you haven’t seen that film I suggest you stop reading this instant and go pick a copy up.

Coach Carter, like Carter’s last film, Save the Last Dance, (which I hated) is a basic formula picture. But where Save the Last Dance failed to offer a relevant point of view on any of the issues it addressed, this film has a fascinating centerpiece in Ken Carter that it cares just as deeply about as it does the basketball itself. Coach Carter would have been a better film had it gone outside the limitations of a formula, but for my money, this will do just fine too.