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As darkness descends over West Texas every Friday from September through December, a dazzling, disorienting glow, visible on the stark horizon for miles around, ignites the blackened sky. Looming over the landscape, Ratliff Stadium, the country's biggest high school football field, overflows with 20,000 spectators. The crowd's jubilation rises to a fever pitch, as the Permian Panthers, Odessa's "boys in black," take to the field like warriors in an ancient coliseum. Once a week during the fall, this town and its dreams are carried on the padded shoulders of these young gridiron heroes.
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Rated:
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[ PG ]
LOW LEVEL COARSE LANGUAGE, MATURE THEMES
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Cinema release:
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10 Mar 2005
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DVD release:
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13 Jul 2005
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Director:
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Peter Berg
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Running time:
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117 mins
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Stars:
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Billy Bob Thornton, Derek Luke, Garrett Hedlund, Connie Britton
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Links:
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Official Site
IMDb
Rotten Tomatoes
Metacritic
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What we say
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For Australians, a film about American football might not seem an appetising experience. But "Friday Night Lights" uses the sport as the foundation for broader and more interesting themes: the lack of opportunities available to lower-class communities and the unnecessary pressure that parents place on their children to succeed where they failed.
"Friday Night Lights" is produced by Brian Grazer, the man responsible for acclaimed pictures such as "8 Mile" and "A Beautiful Mind". It comes as no surprise that his latest feature is leagues above the quality of "Varsity Blues", a stinker of a film about gridiron that failed to see anything beyond the sport itself.
Billy Bob Thornton stars as Gary Gaines, the coach of the Permian High School Panthers in Odessa, Texas. The team is on a mission to win their fifth state championship in the summer of 1988, but the pressure mounts when their star player, Boobie Miles (Derek Luke) succumbs to a knee injury.
As the players rebuild as a team and struggle with their inner demons, the townsfolk grow increasingly hostile towards Gaines. For them, the hopes and dreams of Odessa rest on championship victory and this obsession gradually evolves into threats against Gaines' family.
"Friday Night Lights" traces the experiences of a few key players, including Mike (Lucas Black), whose sick mother is pushing for him to move away to college at the end of the season; and Don (Garrett Hedlund), whose obsessive father Charlie (Tim McGraw) beats him into submission.
This is a sad film, but the strong performances make it immensely watchable. Black is the standout of the young ensemble; viewers may remember him as the little boy from "Sling Blade" (the film that launched Thornton into the Hollywood spotlight), while Luke (Antwone Fisher) and Jay Hernandez (crazy/beautiful) continue to prove that they are among Hollywood's finest up-and-coming talents.
Thornton delivers a restrained and believable performance as Gaines.
Director Peter Berg (Welcome to the Jungle) captures the action of football with raw intensity, shooting the film with washed-out colours and a mobile lens.
"Friday Night Lights" is an impressive addition to the sporting genre.
Friday Night Lights
If football is the unofficial religion of the American people, then high school football is their church. It is an opportunity for young men to touch heaven and carry the dreams of their team and townsfolk with them, as this film so inspiringly describes.
Friday Night Lights is based on H Bissinger's non-fiction book, which casts an eye across the Texas town of Odessa and its high school football team, the Permian High Panthers, during their entire 1988 season.
But this film is not just a sports movie. (Mind you, it's a very good sports movie, with a bone-crunching impact that will pin you to your seat.) It goes deeper, touching on the motivations of a community which invests so much in their players.
Friday Night Lights tries to borrow some of the authenticity of the book by representing the play in an almost documentary style, with hand-held cameras and stripped and desaturated colours. It could have misfired, except director Peter Berg (also an actor and writer) keeps the tone constant and the pace compelling.
Although there's an excess of movement and a frenzy of filmmaking, star Billy Bob Thornton's quiet yet forceful presence underpins and anchors the film. He gives meaning to the madness, as would any priest in front of his parish.
The film showcases the emerging talent of the young team with relatively unknown actors Lucas Black, Jay Hernandez, Lee Thompson Young and Garrett Hedlund, all stars on and off the field, but a few old-timers also make an impact, most notably country singer Tim McGraw as a boozy and abusive dad.
Where Friday Night Lights stands tall is not on the football field but in the hearts of the people and the players. This film succeeds in sharing the soul of this society and this sport like few others before it. It's rumoured to be Dubya's favourite film of the moment, but don't let that deter you.
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DVD Review
There aren't too many variations to the American sports movie and it's fairly easy to view new additions to the genre as amalgams (if not direct remakes) of recent predecessors. Sadly, "Friday Night Lights" is no real exception.
In the small, working class town of Odessa, Texas, pressure mounts on the Permian Panthers - a high school football team that every member of the community is urging toward the state championships - even before the local football season begins. Straight-faced captain Mike (Lucas Black) is torn between his on- and off-field responsibilities as he tries to care for his ill mother while rebellious screw-up Don (Garrett Hedlund) must deal with the abusive pressure of his father (played by country singer Tim McGraw). The pressure seems bearable, at least until the team's star player is injured and everyone from the bench-warmers to the coach (Billy Bob Thornton in another solid performance) are expected to produce the impossible.
Although the film makes a decent attempt to take a more dramatic, character-based approach to the genre by examining the desperate domestic situations of some of the players, the film still contains the same formulaic elements that sports movie fans simultaneously crave and detest about the genre. There's the three standard montage sequences that condense the training, winning streak and losing streak plot points; the impassioned speech by the coach as he encourages his players to struggle through adversity; the athletically gifted hotshot who inevitably suffers a humbling setback; and of course, the desperate sprint to the line in the dying seconds of the final game.
The end of the film does redeem some of the cliched, melodramatic moments that are spread throughout the film with a final, refreshing approach to the culture of school-age sport. But for a more entertaining film that takes itself a little less seriously while incorporating all of the same themes, check out Jon Voight in "Varsity Blues".
The DVD special features include a few inconsequential deleted scenes, director's commentary and some behind-the-scenes featurettes. However, the big weakness in the bonus material is the lack of discussion about the book from which the film was adapted.
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Find more info on Friday Night Lights with Bing Search
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What you say
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Add a review
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What you say
Beautiful Filmmaking... But Why?
If the first few minutes of American football don't flip your brain's automatic off-switch, you'll realise that "Friday Night Lights" isn't actually about football. It's about life in a small town. A town so small and insignificant that their high school football team is their main claim to fame, and the focus of their attention.
The atmosphere of the town and its surrounding emptiness is captured wonderfully, and there is great contrast in pace and style, between the scenes of slick action and gritty ambience.
The players on the football team are all looking for different things and they're all under pressure from different directions, but in the face of adversity, they must learn firstly to pull together, and then to draw individual strength from the team experience.
So far so good, but it seems as though the film is working to a big ending, but when the ending comes, it's a bit of a disappointment. The (anti)climactic scene finishes with a touchdown that would swing the game, but there's confusion about whether it counts and who's won, and after it's made clear, they try to tell you that it doesn't matter anyway. Then there's an epilogue which shows that all the main players all went on to have uninteresting but moderately successful careers. So I'm with it all the way to the end, but then I can't figure out what the point is... and why didn't they make a movie about the team from the following year.
Robert Beveridge
Sydney, NSW
19 Mar 2005
Irrelevant to Aussies
I've always thought movies were supposed to entertain. If they don't entertain, they are documentaries. This was the least entertaining movie I have ever had to sit through at the cinemas. It is about as relevant to Australian audiences as a documentary about famous AFL players would be to audiences in America - no relevance whatsoever. This should have been a Midday Movie for bored housewives to watch. "Friday Night Lights" might be of some relevance if you are a parent who is forcing your kid to play competitive sport instead of enjoying their childhood, as it has a way of putting competition sports into perspective.
Dave
Sydney, NSW
16 Mar 2005
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