Friday Night Lights (2004)
Directed by Peter Berg
A small, turbulent town in Texas obsesses over their high school football team to an unhealthy degree. When the star tailback, Boobie Miles, is seriously injured during the first game of the season, all hope is lost, and the town's dormant social problems begin to flare up. It is left to the inspiring abilities of new coach Gary Gaines to instill in the other team members -- and, by proxy, the town itself -- a sense of self-respect and honor.
14 connections found
View:
14 films that influenced Friday Night Lights
What critics say influenced Friday Night Lights
(Recall if you will the black man in the asylum of Fuller's Shock Corridor who believes himself to be the Grand Wizard of the KKK.)
Though the film wants desperately to be a smart, cynical sports drama along the lines of the scathing "North Dallas Forty" or the recent documentary "Go Tigers!" (as opposed to the more formulaic and sentimental but crowd-pleasing "Remember the Titans") it does some surprisingly dumb things that undermine its best intentions.
From All the Right Moves to Varsity Blues to Remember the Titans , Friday Night Lights unfortunately doesn't completely distinguish itself from the pack of football movies before it--like those, this is all about how the young players--be they underdogs, second-string nobodies or stars--rising above the mounting pressure and playing the best they can, bless their hearts.
Based on H.G. Bissinger’s best-selling book and already hailed as “one of the top five greatest sports stories of all time” by Sports Illustrated, I was expecting another triumphant underdog story in the vein of Rudy or Remember the Titans.
Just out of curiosity, I watched "Remember the Titans"--the most recent critically acclaimed high school football epic--and marveled at how much more effectively "Titans" established its characters and plot in the first half hour alone.
"Friday Night Lights" gets you cheering for the Panthers, but it's a far cry from the usual rah-rah sports-movie formula--closer, in texture and ambition, to the documentary "Hoop Dreams" than to the pious "Remember the Titans."
Having the white underdog face off against the cocky black favorite isn't a new plot gimmick--Sylvester Stallone did it way back in 1976 in "Rocky."
The film's soul may be closer to Rocky than Hoosiers or The Natural, but there are still plenty of the expected "big" moments, such as when the underachiever makes an important play and when the strong, silent leader fuels a comeback.
Though the film wants desperately to be a smart, cynical sports drama along the lines of the scathing "North Dallas Forty" or the recent documentary "Go Tigers!" (as opposed to the more formulaic and sentimental but crowd-pleasing "Remember the Titans") it does some surprisingly dumb things that undermine its best intentions.
Based on a true-story book by H.G. Bissinger, this one is slightly more ambitious, intent on doing with high-school football what North Dallas Forty did at the pro level — that is, scrape beneath the surface glamour in search of some realistic grit.
Advertisement
Obviously influenced by Oliver Stone 's Any Given Sunday , Berg effectively paints his own gritty, documentary-style picture of the competitive sport, without relying on too many trite, gushy, over-the-top moments.
Oliver Stone took a stab at the same subject with Any Given Sunday, but his overheated hysteria often got in the way of the larger points he was trying to make.
It's what the Omaha Beach sequence in Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is to Oliver Stone's Platoon: an evolution by way of devolution that erases the veneer, such as there is, prettifying violent confrontation, becoming in the process the unadorned engine to which Stone's ultimately featherweight Any Given Sunday aspired.
Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday was virtually ruined by this same syndrome, but to his credit Berg does show some restraint in Friday Night Lights.
His relationship by QB Winchell all the more effective because of the father-son film history he shares with Lucas Black (who played the boy in Sling Blade and was directed by Thornton in All the Pretty Horses.)
It's what the Omaha Beach sequence in Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is to Oliver Stone's Platoon: an evolution by way of devolution that erases the veneer, such as there is, prettifying violent confrontation, becoming in the process the unadorned engine to which Stone's ultimately featherweight Any Given Sunday aspired.
The film's soul may be closer to Rocky than Hoosiers or The Natural, but there are still plenty of the expected "big" moments, such as when the underachiever makes an important play and when the strong, silent leader fuels a comeback.
Advertisement
A barrage of in-your-face machismo with a stylized, chaotic visual style that owes equal debt to "The Blair Witch Project" and the D-Day landing in "Saving Private Ryan," it leaves you feeling pummeled like a sacked quarterback.
It's what the Omaha Beach sequence in Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is to Oliver Stone's Platoon: an evolution by way of devolution that erases the veneer, such as there is, prettifying violent confrontation, becoming in the process the unadorned engine to which Stone's ultimately featherweight Any Given Sunday aspired.
Peter Berg, an actor ("The Last Seduction") turned director ("Very Bad Things," "The Rundown") does a fine job of establishing that sense of community excitement.