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Directed by: Peter Berg Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Tim McGraw, bunch of really good unknowns When I came to Texas, I already knew that Texans had a romance with football that few can understand, unless they're from here. I'm not from here. And I wasn't a student athlete, like the characters of the new film, Friday Night Lights, so I never knew first-hand about the tension and pressure that role involves. Especially when the whole world that you know revolves around it. This is what Friday Night Lights is about. When H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger quit his job at the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1988 to move to Odessa, Texas, he told the head football coach at Permian High School that he wanted to write a book like "Hoosiers." Thing is, Hoosiers is a fictionalized story about Indiana basketball in the 1950s. Bissinger is not a fiction writer -- he'd won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting the year before. To tell the story about Odessa's football team, he held a mirror up to the whole town. They didn't like it. When the book came out, they were furious at seeing what they were. Without judging, Bissinger rightly questioned their focus on football uber alles, their desperation in the face of the 1980s oil slump that threatened the only reason anyone went into the desert of West Texas, the unrelenting pressure on student athletes to win at all costs, and their apparent racism about the way they treated their black student athletes. Bissinger didn't even go back to Odessa for the book premiere. He'd about given up on making it into a movie, too. In comes producer Brian Grazer and director Peter Berg. About this same time last year, I was enjoying Berg's last film, The Rundown. And it helps that he's a cousin of Bissinger's. Peter Berg is not getting enough credit for this film, even though some critics are already hailing it as one of the best sports movies of all time. Also deserving credit is his cinematographer, Tobias Schliessler, who also worked on The Rundown. Friday Night Lights moves back and forth between hand-held cameras to slow-motion well enough that it feels like simultaneously being in the stands at a football game and watching replay films. As far as the acting, once again, Billy Bob Thornton, as Coach Gary Gaines, is playing opposite a country singer who's playing the worst kind of bad guy. In Sling Blade, it was Dwight Yoakam playing an alcoholic, abusive father. In Friday Night Lights, it's Tim McGraw playing an alcoholic, abusive father of one of the players. This is absolutely an ensemble cast, and the actors playing the team members are phenomenal. Don't forget the sound department. The voices on radios and loudspeakers are used more effectively than any I've heard in a movie, effectively becoming the chorus to this classic Greek drama. The music's great, too, featuring more Public Enemy tracks than I've heard since Do The Right Thing. Everything anyone likes about football is in this movie. That means at its core, Friday Night Lights is about tension, sacrifice and gut-wrenching pain, both on and off the field. That's the feelings it evokes -- the kind of tension and pain that is at times difficult to watch, but is so entertaining that it can't be ignored. It becomes all-encompassing. It becomes the whole world. That's what football means in Texas. RATING: 4.5 PROS: Excellent sports movie with great writing and cinematography. CONS: Ensemble cast, with no stars save Billy Bob. Easy to dismiss because of the controversial book it was based on. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390022/ Edit: Tightened up a few things. J.theYellow fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Oct 11, 2004 |
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Oct 10, 2004 21:15
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 03:43 |
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I went to see this movie Saturday night...the late showing....in the mall....with my dad and 200 13-18 year olds who i wanted to strangle many times throughout the movie. Despite this, i really enjoyed it. I wouldnt go as far to say it's the best movie ever but i was really drawn in by it. I felt that the camera work was top notch, and the score by Explosions In The Sky was spot on. In fact, i've rarely heard a score work so well in a movie. Explosions songs tend to have a dramatic crescendos throughout the song and Peter Berg was able to get them matching up exceptionally well with the action on screen. i didn't feel that the story was completely predictable like most sports movies. the pace of the movie, the camera work, the music, and the acting (especially by Tim McGraw, who the gently caress knew he could act) were all very well done. rating: 4.5 pros: It's not over the top, wont be declared the "feel good movie of the year", EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY, Tim McGraw, great action scenes cons: most people wont like it because of a) the shakey camera, b) the fact that it's not a "feel good" sports movie or c) because of the pace.
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Oct 11, 2004 16:36
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I managed to see an early screening of this last Monday at the University of Michigan (I'm not a student there, my high school's football team got invited to go and see it) and I thought it was a great film, very inspirational and involving. It has good character development and a solid plot, and the football action is great as well. I really started to feel for the team especially towards the end of the movie. Overall, it was a great sports movie, maybe not an "instant classic" but it will be remembered for years to come. Overall: 4.5
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Oct 12, 2004 02:53
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I saw this on Friday, and I'm gonna have to say I wasn't too impressed. I like football and everything, but I don't like when a movie tries to develop characters and fails at it. The quarterback wasn't developed well at all in my opinion, and the Chavez linebacker guy was supposed to be important but I never even remembered who he was. The third-string runningback just came out of nowhere and they never explained who he was or anything. The development of Boobie Miles, though, was excellent. The scene where He starts bawling in his uncle's truck when he learns he'll never play football again was very well-done. The game scenes were pretty good, and I liked the story, especially how they separated the story from every other freakin' football movie ever when They lost the state championship. All in all, it was okay, but I didn't like it as much as other football movies like Varsity Blues or Remember the Titans. 3/5
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Oct 13, 2004 02:12
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This movie was medium. The cuts were WAY TOO FAST and made me pretty sick. The story was ok though. Tim McGraw did a good job of making me want to kill him with a knife. The best part was the Boobie Miles scene, where my friend said "Mason, leave." Just picture that sound file in your head and you'll be laughing. 3/5
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Oct 14, 2004 03:11
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One of the best things I noticed was the way the camera was tight and jerky whenever Permian was down, and was wide, highlight reel style when they were coming back and doing well. I thought the soundtrack blended perfectly, never overpowering or underwhelming. The only song I thought didn't fit was somebody's cover of Black Betty, it just felt out of place. As Justiceguy said, it does seperate itself very well from the other football movies. At the end when Tim McGraw hugs his son and gives him his ring, the emotion of the entire movie is driven home. Maybe I can relate a little more to the Panthers when they've had to deal with dirty players and poor officiating due to this years season, but I still think that Friday Night Lights is a very solid film. 4/5
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Oct 15, 2004 04:29
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I loved this movie, the fooball was great and it stayed somewhat true to the book. My girlfriend even loved it, and she views football as nothing more than the evil that keeps us from going to Bed Bath and Beyond every Sunday.
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Oct 17, 2004 21:57
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ok i am probably going to be made fun of for this but at the end when tim mcgraw's character puts his championship ring on his son's finger literally made me tear up a little, mostly because of the way his character had been developed up to that point. the fact remains, though, that most of the characters in this movie were developed very little to not at all. i didn't read the book but i'm positive that it was much more in depth than this movie ever came close to being. i understand that it didn't have the time to cover all that the book covered but i think it could have done a much better job. however, along with the scene i mentioned above there were also some other classic moments. this movie was all about the extremely touching moments. i was never a big fan of high school football and usually made fun of school spirit and crap like that but seeing this movie definitely brought out some emotions during those few wonderful scenes. i'll give it 3.5.
the_good_life fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Oct 18, 2004 |
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Oct 18, 2004 10:02
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I am not a huge football fan, but I enjoyed this movie enough to want to sit down and read the book to get the rest of the story. I thought the actor who played the quaterback was excellent as an unsure leader. I though Thorton was excellent as a coach who realized that there was more to life than football. McGraw, as has been said above was superb. The pacing was great, especially that they didn't make me sit through all of the preliminary round games in the tournament and just did a montage. (you need a montage!! ) It's also worth noting that I only watched this game so that I didn't have to be in the house to watch the drat yankee game. I was not in the mood to see a movie but it was the only place I could think to go where I wouldn't have to see it. Despite all that, I really enjoyed this movie. 4.5/5
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Oct 20, 2004 04:48
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This movie broke a lot of rules and still managed to pull it off. I can't think of how many pure emotional exposition scenes this movie had that STILL worked. Like when the abussive father was saying "this is all you'll have and it has to last you." People don't loving talk like that. They don't come out and state in a couple sentences what has made them complete fuckholes. But amazingly, the scene worked. I was sitting there thinking it shouldn't, but it did. The kids saying, "I don't feel like a teenager." Kids don't talk like that. I sure as hell didn't stand around with my friends going, "we're teenagers and should be wacky and happy." But it still worked. I credit it to the very good acting. AMAZING how tiny tiny touches can completely change a movie. Just think for a second the last play. And they came up short. If they had made it, it would be a TOTALLY different movie. History or not, it was incredibly ballsy in this Hollywood age to end with them coming short. I got to imagine there was massive pressure for them to change that. The town just consumed by football felt 100% accurate. With it dominating conversation, with all the second guessing. The sideline generals. I really enjoyed that. Where the coach just had to sit there and grin at all the suggestions. I don't know how many half-time pep talks I've heard in my cinematic life. Maybe a billion. But they get credit for having some fresh and original ones without being overly melodramatic. I see the movie has made like $40MM, so that ain't bad. Of course it will do jack overseas where American football is appreciated about as much as pumpkin seed spitting. I'm glad the movie is finding somewhat of an audience. It really did have some gutsy material you don't see in generic sports movies today. Some of the only stuff I didn't like was parts that were really telegraphed. Like the playoff run-ups. When it was "inevitable" they would face the giant team, then they show the chart and they are like a zillion games away. They could have fudged it and just gone to the championship. I think that montage of a trillion games wasn't very useful. Also, as stated, I don't think a lot of the characters were as developed as they could have been. This was a time constraint. When you have that many players AND the coach, you just can't dwell long. So every scene was chock full of plainly-stated emotion. Ima give it a 4
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Oct 24, 2004 22:06
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Bump because this is out in UK cinemas now. I don't really know anything about American Football, but I loved this film. In fact, it's probably the best sports film I've ever seen. 4.5
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Jun 1, 2005 10:39
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Fantastic movie. Loved every minute of it. 4.5/5
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Jun 6, 2005 16:43
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Attention: This movie is not about football! I know the entire movie revolves around the coaches and players of a High School football team and their topsy-turvy season. But this film is so much more, it's a story of dedication, the desparity of living in the past and living in a one dimensional small town. It's about independance from your roots and discovering yourself. This is the movie about football that is not made for the jocks this film is about. It's a simultaneously sad, bleak, hopeful, happy story. Thornton does a great job as the coach, as does Tim McGraw as an alcoholic father who believes there is nothing more in life past the senior year of high school. That being said, the football scenes are still fantastic. 5/5.5 PS This movie's soundtrack by Texas' Explosions in the Sky is perfect, it perfectly portays the bleak Texas prarie, a dying small town, and the helmet crushing football scenes. Probably my favorite soundtrack for any movie.
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Jan 30, 2006 23:04
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DukeRustfield posted:Of course it will do jack overseas where American football is appreciated about as much as pumpkin seed spitting. As someone who knows nothing about american football except that it's a game played in america, I still enjoyed the movie because of its universal themes like making something of yourself, graduating, self worth. I was expecting a movie like bring it on except about american football, but it wasn't like that, it was much more tasteful. the character of gaines was good and three dimensional. 4.5, good acting and visually stunning. the lighting and colours especially are subtle but fantastic. good use of music too.
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Jul 6, 2006 16:42
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One of the best football movies I've ever seen
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Jul 14, 2006 03:11
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