Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5181 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-09-05
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 113 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Based on the non-fiction bestseller by H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights looks at high school football in the harsh light of reality, finding heart and hardness while stirring our emotions. Actor-director Peter Berg is Bissinger's cousin; he knows the material well, and understands how an obsession with winning turns high school kids into somber, over-pressured gladiators--expendable soldiers in a community war against shame and obscurity. The fact-based story focuses on the 1988 football season of Odessa-Permian high school in West Texas, and as a fast-paced sports movie, Berg delivers the goods with a rousing, frenetically styled crowd-pleaser. But there's darkness in this tale of weary underdogs, including an abusive father (well-played by country music star Tim McGraw), threatening townsfolk, an injured star running back (Derek Luke), a tormented quarterback (Lucas Black), and the melancholy coach (Billy Bob Thornton) who takes his team to the finals. Berg's film could use less flashy cutting and more drama to support its gridiron intensity, but Friday Night Lights offers a refreshing alternative to the conventional sports movie. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Synopsis
Based on the best-selling book by H.G. Bissinger, Peter Berg's gritty, powerful drama tells the true story of a small Texas town in which high school football is the only thing that matters. Set in 1988, Friday Night Lights opens on the first day of practice for the Odessa Permian Panthers. Under intense pressure and scrutiny from the town's residents, head coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) nonetheless maintains a calm façade. His star player, Boobie Miles (Derek Luke), is a running back with unlimited potential, but the rest of the team is undersized and lacking killer instinct--especially quarterback Mike Winchell (Lucas Black), who's shy and short of confidence, and Don Billingsley (Garrett Hedlund), who is tormented by his father (Tim McGraw) for being too soft. When Boobie goes down on opening day with a career threatening knee injury, the season appears to be over. But Gaines won't give up, and neither will the rest of his feisty players. Billy Bob Thornton delivers another outstanding performance in Berg's impassioned drama, as do the film's young actors (most notably Luke, Black, and Hedlund). Tobias Schliessler's fuel-injected photography and Explosion in the Sky's electrifying score make Friday Night Lights an even more spectacular movie-going experience.

Customer Reviews

High school football as a glorious religion
For an appreciation of this excellent film see the beautifully written review by D. Mikels. What I want to do here is present a counterpoint. I played high school football too and might have sat on the bench a little less except that I was a slow-footed T-quarterback at a school that ran the single wing. Yes, it was that long ago.

The football presented in this film by director Peter Berg is a little different. In fact it is a whole lot different. Here high school football is the most important thing in the world, not just for the players and coaches, but for the entire town. If you drive through a west Texas town or an Oklahoma or even an Indiana town on a Friday night in the fall, the town will be deserted (as in the movie) while the stadium at the high school will be lit up like a gigantic Christian revival meeting in which it might be fully expected that Christ will appear to perform the Second Coming.

It is no exaggeration to say that in the heartland of America the rites and rituals of football, joined into by almost the entire populous, take on all the trappings of a most zealous and evangelical religion. What Peter Berg has done here is capture that maniacal devotion and idolatry--that oh, so American way of life in a quasi-realistic way.

I say "quasi" because there is some license taken with reality by the film makers. First of all, and most importantly, the players are too old. Derek Luke, who plays star running back Boobie Miles (and does an outstanding job), was 29 when the movie was filmed. Jay Hernandez who played Chavez was 25. Anybody who really plays football or coaches it can tell you there is a world of difference between a young man of seventeen or eighteen and one of twenty-five or thirty.

And the scenes filmed especially for the movie with the flying tackles and the rolling flips and the bone-crunching open field tackles--forget it. Those are staged tackles, like kung fu fights in Chinese movies. Everything looks fantastic only it's about as realistic as a barroom fight in an old cowboy movie from the forties.

What is realistic? When sexy, saucy blonde Melissa goes looking for her trophy seduction of the MoJo quarterback--that's real. She knows that the highest status in town belongs to the star of the high school football team, and the highest status of any girl is to get that guy. Also realistic is the pressure put on coaches and administrators to win football games. Winning isn't a matter of life and death. As some coaches will tell you, it's more important than that. And they mean it. Die and you're only dead. But lose at football and you are disgraced for life. Typifying this mentality is Don Billingsley, father of running back Charles, who wants to beat the life out of his son for fumbling the football. Can't the kid see that you let down your teammates, your school, your town, your friends, your relatives and God Almighty if you fumble the f-ing football?

Also real is Boobie Miles's answer to what subject he gets all A's in: "There's only one subject. That's football." Or this line from a disappointed fan calling in to the local radio jock show after the team loses a game: "There's too much learning going on at that school." He's not kidding. He means it. Too much time in the classroom. Too little on the field.

So is this film--as its devoted fans believe and know to be true--an ode to the glory and beauty of football? Think again, jockstrap. It's a glorification. It represents a mentality in which the greatest events of life occur when you're eighteen years old. After that it's all over. What you got left is beer, the wife, TV, and Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days." Or to choose another lyric, what you've got are "Veterans of the fight/Fast asleep at the traffic light." (Jackson Browne)

There are a number of goofs and anachronisms in the movie. IMDb lists a dozen or so including cars in the parking lots that weren't even made in 1988, the year of the film, and football gear used that didn't exist then. But that doesn't matter, and nobody who loves this film cares in the slightest about that because what really counts is the fantasy, the imagined and recalled glory of a time when everything was new and astonishingly vivid, when events made indelible marks on our hearts and souls. When we were all 17. This then is mythology in the making and in the living.

The question begs itself: is this good or is this bad? Is football as a religion something to be treasured or condemned? Personally I have mixed feelings. Young men have aggressive tendencies that need to be channeled and middle-aged men need to play war games. Football allows an acting out of these needs without undue harm to anyone. Certainly football is better than gang-banging.

When, some many years down the road, the history of cinema is brought up to date, this film will be remembered because it is a very good film, and Billy Bob Thornton's fine performance as Coach Gary Grimes will be appreciated. But instead of the film being seen as a realistic portrayal of what it's like to play and be involved in high school football, it will be seen as a commentary on the sociology of middle America in the late 20th century, a time when the nation was very rich and football was not only king but something close to a way of life, something indistinguishable from a national religion.

American football
Another movie based around Americans love for football (their kind!) and the passions it stirs within them. There have been a lot of movies about the sport which are 'based on a true story' over the years. This isn't much different from the rest except that the town of Odessa has brought home the state championship before and so have very high expectations of their local school team. We get to know about the private lives of only a few of the team members and the coach and even then not always very much. This makes it hard to grow attached to them and their quest for gold.
It's still manages to entertain with some decent body bashing scenes (otherwise known as football).

I'd recommend 'Remember the Titans' if you want an uplifting and incredible football story. Even 'Invicible' had something that 'Friday night lights' lacks.

fascinating, moving sports film
I don't like American football. I don't understand how it works. And yet I was completely won over by this film.

High school sport is huge in America, particularly Texas. In the dustblown oil city of Odessa, on the flat, arid Texas plain, it's the only game in town. This film makes absolutely clear the kind of pressure that's put on high school kids - they are reliving their parents' dreams and aspirations. The bland country singer Tim McGraw makes a huge impression in this film - a superb portrayal of a drunken abusive ex-player, who says to his son something like "This is it - you have one year - everything's downhill from there on". And that sums up the film: a bunch of 17 year old kids must carry all the hopes and fears of an entire town - to a climactic battle in the Houston superdome that even if you don't know anything about American football will still leave you with your heart in your mouth.

The story's told in snatches of conversation, radio commentary, little telling scenes. It takes you a while to work out who the characters are, but don't worry - you'll get there. You are given just enough detail to work with and no more than you need. Lucas Black stands out as the strong, silent kid with too much responsibility, but all are good.

I just can't believe how good this rather unpromising film was. I'm still thinking about it two weeks later. The ending - well, read the captions carefully. There's a lovely, ironic twist to look out for.

It's based on a true story, apparently. It feels like it. It really is one of the best American films I've seen in ages... if you're at all interested in the fact that America really is a foreign country, watch this film.