I have been a fan of sports and athletics all my life, both as a participant in my younger days and now as a spectator. Obviously, the primary purpose of professional sports is entertainment. Amateur teams sports, while having an entertainment component, have other primary purposes, namely team building and character development. These two concepts go hand in hand. When thinking about emphasizing building character through sports, one can’t help but think of the real life story of Coach Ken Carter.
Film
Coach Carter is based on the true life story of Ken Carter, a former player at Richmond High School in California who returns to coach the school’s basketball team. Richmond High School is located in a poor section of town and has a rather dismal academic record. The team’s recent fortunes in basketball weren’t much better. Coach Carter’s goal was to turn an undisciplined rag tag team into a team of men who respected each other, their coach and sport and who excelled not only on the court but in academics and life in general. Coach Carter put his principles ahead of success on the basketball court. Despite the fact that the team was undefeated, he cancelled games leading to forfeits when he learned of the academic failures of the team and refused to yield to community pressure to reinstate the team until the team worked and brought their grades up to the levels he expected and demanded. Coach Carter is an uplifting film about the benefits of hard work, teamwork and dedication. The film features and excellent performance by Samuel L. Jackson in the lead role. I really enjoyed this film and hope you will as well. Recommended.
Video
Coach Carter is encoded with AVC and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2:35:1 and overall, is a bit of a mixed bag. The film has a rather subdued but otherwise accurate color palette with very nice black level. While the use of color and color saturation is an artistic choice and seemingly always open to debate, I found the color choices here fitting given the subject matter and mood of the film. Overall clarity was good with good image depth although a good bit short of the depth and overall clarity of the better looking films on Blu-ray. Where this encode really comes up short is in the level of detail. Skin textures and background details are lacking and look to be the victim of some minor noise reduction. While the use of digital noise reduction on this encode was minor, I still fail to see the reason for its use at all, especially involving a high definition presentation. Other than the use of DNR, this is a nice looking encode but would have earned a much higher score had all the original detail been left intact.
Audio
Coach Carter is presented with a lossless track using Dolby True HD. All in all, I was also a bit disappointed with the sound of this film. My main complaint is with the overall fidelity of the sound which I felt to be a bit harsh and hard on the ears. This is not a film that you will want to listen to at reference levels. The sound simply lacks the smoothness, openness and transparency of the better sounding encodes. On the plus side, the film’s overall sound is fairly dynamic with excellent bass response which is really most apparent during the hip hop music sequences. Dialogue is fairly well placed in the mix. However, some of the dialogue is lost during the game sequences as a result of the crowd noise and accompanying music which is simply too loud in reference to the dialogue track. I also found the fidelity of the dialogue track to a bit wanting as well, sounding too bright. Another area where I found the sound design to be lacking is in the use of the surround speakers which I felt could have been used to better effect to create more of an immersive sound field during most of the film. During the basketball game sequences, the surrounds really came to life giving you an excellent immersive feel and a sense in being at a game in the crowd. While the surrounds were clearly active during the rest of the film for general room ambiance, I would have liked them to be louder to provide you with a better sense of space and the sense of real voices within a real acoustical environment. However, this is in all likelihood the fault of the sound design rather than the encode.
Special Features
Coach Carter comes equipped with several extras which appear to have been ported over from the DVD. None are in high definition other than the theatrical trailer. The extras include several featurettes. Coach Cater: The Man Behind the Movie consists of an interview with the man the picture is based, Ken Carter where he discusses his experience at Richmond High School and the making of the film. It is by far the most interesting of the featurettes as it gives you a real insight into the actual man rather than the character played by Samuel L. Jackson in the film. Fast Break at Richmond High details the technical aspects that went into filming the live basketball sequences in the film. In Writing Coach Carter, the film’s screenwriters and producers discuss the creative process involved in writing the script for the film. Finally, the featurette Coach Carter: Making the Cut, contains interviews with the cast and crew detailing how the film was made and the cast selected. Also included are 6 deleted scenes and Hope, a music video by Twista featuring Faith Evans both also in standard definition.
Final Thoughts
Coach Carter is an enjoyable film that is well worth your time and a look, even with the somewhat flawed audio and video presentations on this Blu-ray release. While some will look to buy this release, I would recommended it as a rental for most.
