Friday Night Lights

2004
Directed By Peter Berg


SYNOPSIS

In Texas, where high school football is practically a religion, one very competitive team strives to overcome extreme pressures from the community, their coach (Billy Bob Thornton) and their everyday lives in order to succeed and make it to the state finals.

MY THOUGHTS

Based on a book (based on a true story) Friday Night Lights faithfully creates the struggles of small town high school students trying desperately to succeed and impress their coaches and community.

It's an incredibly difficult task to tell an entire high school football season in under two hours... and as a result the film moves at a very brisk pace filled with many montages. Several games are completely skipped over. Sometimes all we see are brief highlights of the important games.

The high school players are introduced and all there's time for is the basic gist of the character. So, they are very stereotypical and cliched young lives (one is an egotistical hotshot, one has an abusive father, one is caring for his sick single mother, etc.) We learn little more about the young players (other than their hopes to play in college,) but the young actors are so effective in their roles that they appear practically fully-fleshed.

Lucas Black (as the quarterback with the ill mother) is excellent in his deeply emotional role as the center of the team. Garrett Hedlund also shines as the running back with his abusive ex-football playing father (Tim McGraw) that he's trying to please and impress.

These character introductions are done very fast in the film and its impressive that we understand these players before the 30 minute mark in the film.


The game scenes create as much tension as you would find in the fights in the original Rocky. The in-game action rivals even the best NFL games... with many jaw-dropping hits.
The film also matches Rocky's main theme that the struggle is far more important than the actual win. This theme is far more effectively achieved by using a team sport rather than a solo sport like boxing.

Football is a sport that doesn't translate as well as others to the big screen like boxing... but Friday Night Lights is by far one of the best football films.