COACH CARTER, is a real-life story figures Ken Carter, who graduated from California's Richmond High only to return there years later, in 1999, and take over as head coach of the boys' basketball team. Unfortunately, the troubled school he remembered as a teenager is an even more insufferable place in his adulthood. Determined to make a change in his players' lives, Carter makes each young man sign a contract that ensures he will maintain a 2.3 GPA, attend every class, sit in the front row and wear a jacket and tie on game day. Of course, the players reject the contract at first, but when they realize that they don't have any other choice, they give in. And when it appears that their tough-as-nails coach is actually turning them into winners on the court, they embrace their coach's philosophy even further. But when Coach Carter receives the incomprehensibly awful progress reports of his players, he does the unthinkable: he benches the entire team with locking the team out of the gym and send them into study hall until their marks improve. Carter's plan quickly becomes a subject of controversy among parents and team boosters, and their objections are soon picked up by the local news media, many of whom are not sympathetic to Carter's belief that his players must have goals beyond college ball or the NBA. Fortunately, his team members had been touched by his effort put on brightening their future and they support him. They study hard and obey the rule in the contract and manage to fulfill the requirement. Carter is heartened and decide to stay. The team make it into the state high-school championship playoffs. The climactic game take place in the tournament's first round against the first ranked team in the state, St. Francis. Although they are defeated in the end, their spirits never die and Coach Carter is very proud of them. In the end, the 6 players manage to go into colleges to pursue their dreams.
After watching this movie, I realize that there are many social issues behind this story. One of them was drug dealing and abuse. This happened to one of the basketball player, Timo Cruz as he had made some drug dealing with his cousin to make money and he only stopped doing such thing when his cousin was being killed. This incident had changed his mind, as the Coach Carter said, he doesn't want to end up his life in jail or being killed by others doing illegal things and he start over his life pleading Carter to let him back to team. Secondly, the parents in the society had a wrong perception thinking that playing basketball was only way for their children out of poverty and getting away of wrong path. So, most of the parents stand out and oppose whenever Coach Carter lock up the gym. More than that, teenagers pregnancy also a social problem in this story. This happen to Kenyon's girlfriend, Kyra(Ashanti) girlfriend who is pregnant and plans to give up to study in college in favour of having the baby. Kenyon who is the father for the child is agonising and does not know whether he should continue to play college ball or take care of the baby. Besides that, the language being used in the society is quite rude and impolite. In conversation, they always use four-letters-word in the sentences.
There are several messages actually are conveyed in this movie. One is that we must have team spirit especially doing something in a group. This will ensure success in doing everything and one person suffers, together the teammates suffer. Just like the scene that the basketball team helps Timo Cruz to finish the remaining push-ups and suicides training. Besides that, we need to work hard to gain success. In order to win the competition, the players have put so much effort doing crazy training and they also have study hard in order to achieve the target set by Coach Carter. Another message expressed in this movie is that we must respect to each other. As mentioned before, the player themselves always loved to use four-letter word in their conversation. This is highly prohibited by Coach Carter and as they do so, they will be punished with suicides training and push-ups.
In a nutshell, we should work hard in order to gain success. One cannot gain anything as he is not putting any effort in chasing something and dreaming only bring nothing. More than that, we should decide what is good to us and not just merely follow others' paces. We should take the responsibility for ourselves to make our life better.
Here is one of the movie review:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.""It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us."
"Your playing small does not serve the world."
"There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you."
"We were all meant to shine as children do. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone."
"And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."
"As we liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
No comments:
Post a Comment