A Review by Phil Calabro
2004, Universal, Dir. Peter Berg - Starring Billy Bob Thorton, Lucas Black, Garett Hedlund, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez, Lee Jackson, Lee Thomson Young, Tim McGraw, Grover Coulson, Connie Britton
Today's sports movies are inevitably cliched, with coach-on-player interaction and all that jazz. Sometimes I have to accept these awful stereotypes, because I realize that as a critic, they may never change from now on. But when I saw Friday Night Lights, a little flicker of hope sparked up. Although it has its usual amount of the same old stuff with the rustic smell of American football on its celluloid, it's got something real that I haven't seen in awhile. Watching the Permian Panthers on the screen had some great realism. You'll be cheering the team on even if they can't hear you.
In Odessa, Texas, 1988, a small little school Permian High (which still exists) has one of the most charismatic and powerful football teams in the country. They've got the special personalities of each player and the problems they face on and off the field. You have Mike Winchell (Black), a depressed character who feels that his mother is running his entire career and life. Then you have Don Billingsley (Hedlund), who is pushed around by abusive alcoholic father Charles (McGraw). Boobie Miles (Luke), the team's strongest player and a total motor mouth, breaks his knee and is afraid he may not be able to accomplish anything else except football. And for Coach Gary Gaines (Thorton), retirement draws closer, those he wants to retain his love for the game.
The cast is quite impressive and very touching for its subject matter. Thornton is amazing as Coach Gaines, who subconciously takes care of the teammates outside of the field, trying to help them love themselves before the game, which is how they will accomplish true victory. Derek Luke is very impressive as the obnoxious James 'Boobie' Miles, whose morale boosting for the team is a small reminder of how much we have to live life to its fullest. Garrett Hedlund fits pretty well as Billingsley, who tries to hold back all his anger despite being pushed back and forth from his raging father. Tim McGraw, making one of his first big-screen performances, is very convincing as an alcoholic, and his fits of rage are simply heartpounding, and some of the most horrifying parts of the film.
Director Berg, who did last year's great 'Rundown', has got the experience of doing head-rushing action, even in a drama. The excitement and drivenness of the football games feels very homey, and very loud. The sounds of bone-crunching and helmet rammings are numerous, and are showcased in a very fashionable style. Instead of being a straight-to-the-grind plotline, the director pieces parts of the action and the actings with an abstract flashback feature, which focuses on parts of the games that correlate with the speaker's words. The result is something that works both on a humorous level and on a stylistic level.
Friday Night Lights gets it right. Instead of spending precious minutes with a blubbering speech (although there is one, but it is very brief), it gives us a very quaint realistic multivarious point-of-view about small-town football leagues and the intense competition and respect it gets throughout the state. For not being the avid sports fan that I am, I found the movie to be entirely worth my time - a touchdown for Berg and its respective cast.
3.5/4 stars
