FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Universal Pictures/ Imagine Entertainment
Grade: C+
Directed by: Peter Berg
Written by: David Aaron Cohen, Peter Berg, book by H.G.
Bissinger
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Lucas Black, Garrett Hedlund, Derek
Luke, Jay Hernandez, Lee Jackson, Lee Thompson Young, Tim
McGraw, Grover Coulson
Screened at: Loews 34th St., NYC, 10/9/04
Where we live makes a difference in how we react to events in
our neighborhoods. If you live as I do in New York City, your
sporting life could revolve around shopping at Zabar's and
Citarella's, though if you're a sports fan at all, you'd go for the
professional teams–New York Rangers, New York Giants, and
the like. If you live in Odessa, Texas, which is admittedly a
dying town, your cultural life will revolve around football, with a
big but. You're going to be sectionalistic rather than nationalistic
and pin your hopes on the successes of your own West Texas
home team, namely the Permian Panthers, the MoJo team of
Odessa. It's difficult for a big city guy like me to understand
what looks to me like provincialism. Just how good can a high-
school team be–when compared to pro-ball and like college
football institutions like the fighting Irish of Notre Dame? At any
rate "Friday Night Lights" is said to be a true story–about a high-
school team that won five state championships in thirty years.
In this particular tale, the subject of Pulitzer-Prize-winning
journalist H.G. Bissinger's book by the same name, the focus is
largely on the fighting spirit of the players who are inspired by a
great coach but also appears to cast a satirical eye on
townspeople who seem to have no off-work lives save for their
rooting for their boys and their pigskin.
Featuring a strong, but not particularly Oscar-worthy
performance of Billy Bob Thornton as Coach Gaines, director
Peter Berg uses a screenplay he co-wrote with David Aaron
Cohen from H.G. Bissinger's book, "Friday Night Lights" to give
us a fly-on-the-wall trip into Permian-Odessa High school's
football team. Our concentration is on particular players such as
Boobie (Derek Luke), number 45 in the lineup and the town's
heroic point man, and also Brian (Jay Hernandez), Lucas (Mike
Winchell), and Don (Garrett Hedlund). Despite this focus, we
learn almost nothing about them as individuals, as Peter Berg is
more intent on showing how they pass, block and run than on
what makes they run on the inside. Though all are seniors at
the school (looking more like the twenty-something that the
actors really are), there is little talk about college or about future
plans, though as an epilogue we find out that these people,
having each garnered their fifteen minutes of fame, wind up with
staid jobs like insurance sales and the like.
While individual character is not the forte of this production,
Berg does succeed in showing up how high-school football is a
secular religion in this West Texas town, the shopkeepers
closing up when each big competition is one with signs
proclaiming "Gone to the game."
Cinematographer Tobias Schlissler put us on the fifty-yard line
and then some, honing on the expressions of the individuals,
their passion for the sport, the willingness to give all in the hope
of victory. In fact when the star player, Boobie, hurts his knee
and a radiologist recommends that he wait the season out,
Boobie physically attacks the doctor and tears up the chart.
David Rosenbloom and Colby Parker Jr.'s frantic editing,
presumably to show us in the audience how frenetic the
activities are, serves instead as a distraction almost as bad as
the intrusive soundtrack. As sports films go, "Friday Night
Lights" is OK, but not at all the groundbreaker some critics have
pronounced it to be.
Rated PG-13. 117 minutes © Harvey Karten
at harveycritic@cs.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 38779 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1326700 X-RT-TitleID: 1137199 X-RT-SourceID: 570 X-RT-AuthorID: 1123 X-RT-RatingText: C+
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews