RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

bettycjung 4/4/18. If you like football movies, then you will probably like this one. It's based on a true story about a Texas high school football team during the year BEFORE they went on to win the state championship. It follows 5 senior players as they try to play their best to win for the coach. However, my favorite football movie is Varsity Blues, which came out 5 years before this movie. While VB was fiction, it pretty much depicted the same kind of issues that were depicted here. And, because it was fiction you do get the chance to cheer for the underdogs who had the worst coach ever (Voight) on the silver screen. Watch VB and I am sure you will agree that VB is much more inspirational and spot on in depicting the southern football culture in which men view football as their masculinity at play.

Tim Pfeifer Based on the award winning book by H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights provides the audience with an inside look at the magnitude of high school football in Texas. The film follows several players, as well as the head coach, as the Permian Panthers attempt to win the State Championship during the 1988 season. The roles of Mike Winchell and Don Billingsley are portrayed well by Lucas Black and Garrett Hedlund. Through their performances, Black and Hedlund were able to show the pressure and stress that football players felt. At one point in the film, one football player says, "relax we're seventeen" and Billingsley responds, "do you feel seventeen?". This quote emphasizes how in Texas, high school football players are held to higher standards than most teenagers. The best performance came from Billy Bob Thornton though, as he played Head Coach Gary Gaines. Thornton does a great job in showing the anxiety of a football coach in Texas. It was cool to see Billy Bob Thornton and Lucas Black together again, eight years after they starred in Sling Blade. The film is directed well throughout, but the final scene stood out the most to me. The scene consists of three football players standing in the parking lot of the stadium a couple days after their last high school game ever. As the players bid farewell to their careers, you can see how a huge part of their lives is over. High school football really isn't like it is in Texas anywhere else. Through excellent directing and acting, the film is successful in highlighting the enormous impact that high school football has on small towns in Texas.

Dan1863Sickles I was so impressed by the intensity and passion of LONE SURVIVOR that I immediately went out of my way to find a copy of Peter Berg's earlier film, Friday NIGHT LIGHTS. Naturally I expected a good film, but I was figuring basically this would just be another REMEMBER THE TITANS -- a family-friendly film about young men learning sportsmanship and life lessons while playing a rough but basically harmless game.I was totally wrong about what I saw. It turned out to be intense, gut-wrenching adult drama, with darkness and small-town cruelty and despair so intense that it rivaled THE LAST PICTURE SHOW or even a surrealistic nightmare picture like BLUE VELVET.Most good movies, even classics like LONE SURVIVOR, tend to start slow and spend fifteen or twenty minutes introducing the characters before the action begins. The thing that makes Friday NIGHT LIGHTS so exhilarating and terrifying is that you plunge right into the season along with the athletes. There's no time to figure out who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, what dangers are lurking up ahead. The pace never flags, and you feel blindsided every time something horrible or freakish happens to one of these young men, on or off the field. There are none of the scenes movies usually use to "explain" the coach or the adults in town. You just have to figure it out as you go along.The football in this movie is more powerful and realistic than I have ever seen in any other film. There's no way to predict who the heroes will be, or which player will suddenly find himself thrust into the limelight. And the same with devastating injuries, failures, and humiliation. There simply is no let up, all season long. Moreover, not one of the young actors seems to be "acting." They all behave as if they're here to play football, not to emote for the camera.Now, I give this movie ten stars. Peter Berg is a genius at the mechanics of film making and then some. But I was aware of some disturbing elements or at least some themes that might be misinterpreted. Other critics mention the large number of sports clichés, but for me the issue was a matter of persistent (if possibly unconscious) stereotyping of the black and white athletes. With some notable and important exceptions, the following trends seemed to prevail: Black athletes are stereotyped as having incredible physical speed and strength, yet they tend to be self-centered childish, boastful, and unable to grasp concepts like self-discipline and hard work. They don't study the game, don't work at learning, and don't practice to improve. When they meet setbacks, they collapse.White athletes are stereotyped as being smaller and slower, yet gifted with phenomenal strength of character and humility. They never give in no matter how many hits they take, on or off the field. They play on pure heart, and as a matter of principle are always willing to push themselves that much harder precisely because they lack the massive strength and speed of the "other" guys.You'll also notice that the white athletes are always being portrayed as fighting for some noble, abstract goal -- respect from the town, love from a distant father, recognition for moral worth. The black athletes just seem to run and jump for the fun of it, or because they're just born that way, or because having money and being famous is all they know of being valued or important.I don't believe for one moment that any of this was intentional, but there is a sense that these attitudes were present if not prevalent in the minds of the filmmakers as they made Friday NIGHT LIGHTS. Ultimately, however, in the final game, the true message comes across, and it is one of brotherhood and moral growth shared by all.

hall895 They like high school football in West Texas. That previous sentence would have a good chance of winning a competition to determine the biggest understatement in the history of the world. The truth is that in West Texas high school football is an obsession. You watch Friday Night Lights and you see the passion. But passion can go too far. The pressure the adults put on a group of teenage boys is ridiculous. The self-worth of a town is determined by the results of high school football games. Adults live vicariously through the team, trying to relive past glories. Or bask in reflected glory since they never actually had any glory of their own. In the midst of all this stands a coach who has to mold his boys into men while also managing to satisfy the town's bloodlust for victory. And there are the boys themselves, they all have their own hopes and dreams, many of which have nothing to do with football. The players are constantly told that playing high school football will be the greatest thing they do in their lives. How sad it will be if that is true.Coach Gary Gaines, played by Billy Bob Thornton, is the central character in the film. Gaines is a man put under tremendous pressure and he handles it about as well as you could possibly hope he would. He understands that the town's obsession with his team is unhealthy at best, dangerous at worst. But make no mistake, the coach wants to win. And he's got the team to do it. Until he loses his star player to injury in the first game. Can he rally his team in the face of adversity? The movie follows the team on its roller-coaster ride of a season, big ups and downs all along the way. There's some drama, some excitement, and maybe even a little room for growth for some characters who may come to realize there is in fact more to life than high school football.Thornton gives a very strong performance in the starring role. And Tim McGraw is a revelation as the alcoholic, emotionally abusive father of one of the players. While Thornton and McGraw are excellent and create a couple of memorable characters the movie doesn't do as good a job as you would hope in establishing the personalities and stories of the players. The cocky, headstrong star running back has some pizazz to him but injury cuts him down. The film has some good emotional moments with him as he struggles to accept his fate. But when the story turns its attention to the other players things fall somewhat flat. The quarterback is quite bland. Most of the other players remain total mysteries, not established well enough at all for us to really care much about them or their fates. There is the one player, the son of the McGraw character, who has his moments but that story is much more about the dad than the son. It's odd but in this story of a high school football team it is the team itself, the players, who get short shrift. It all makes for an interesting movie but it doesn't pack the emotional wallop of some other movies of its type. There's some decent drama but nothing that really has you on the edge of your seat. This look at a team and its town has some good pieces but it never quite all comes together. In reaching for the goal line maybe this movie comes up just a yard or two short.