An obsession to win

Rating: 8/10 (13 July 2008)

The film Friday Night Lights is more than just a great sports film it is also a great snapshot of life in America and our obsession with winning in sports. The film is based on the novel written by H.G Bissenger and it is based on the 1988 Permian Panther football team. The film follows the team from the opening day of practice to the state championship game in the fall.
At times you get the sense you are watching a documentary when viewing Friday Night Lights. Many scenes are shot where the camera takes an objective point of view. The audience simply observes the action as if looking in from a window almost as a voyeur would do. This adds a sense of sympathy to the players as you feel the pressure being laid upon them by parents,coaches, townsfolk etc. Indeed, everywhere the players go they are asked "You gonna take state?" Doesn't anyone care about grades in school or being a good person? In this film it does not seem so. The whole town is obsessed with winning state.
Several scenes from the film reinforce the obsession to winning. In almost every shot of people driving there is a sports talk radio show discussing the ups and downs of the Permian Panthers. This sports talk seems to hang over the town as a constant drone.
In another scene three football players are sitting at an outdoor fast-food restaurant, a guy of about thirty with his wife and baby approach the players and ask to get a picture of his daughter with the next "state champion quarterback". As the father walks away he flashes his own state championship ring and says "get yourself one of these", he also says that this period of life will pass you by quickly and from here on out it is just "babies and memories". You get the feeling that this mans best years of his life were when he played football and won in high school. This is a bleak and depressing thought.
Why I think this film is great is because it does not glamorize the town or the towns people. It is very realistic in it's depiction of the homes and lifestyles of the people of Odessa. It also is not your traditional Hollywood sports film, unlike films like Hoosiers, or The longest Yard this film does not have a typical happy, Hollywood ending. Without giving away too much I will say the ending left me very satisfied because it demonstrated maturity in the main characters. They grew as people in the end and some realized that winning isn't everything.
The head coach of the Permian Panthers is Coach Gary Gaines played by the very talented Billy Bob Thornton. I say very talented because of films like Slingblade and A Simple Plan, not "Mr. Woodcock". In Friday Night Lights he plays a coach that has a desire to win but seems sort of like an outsider to the regulars of the town. In one scene after losing a game he arrives home to find numerous "for sale" signs in his yard. Again the point is very clear win or move on out of Odessa.
Friday Night Lights has a great soundtrack with "old school" rap songs from the 1980's. Many of the football sequences are some of the best I have seen on film. The scene when the Panthers walk out onto the field of the Houston Astrodome for the state championship gets even me pumped up and ready to don a helmet and try to "take state".
I realize that Friday Night Lights will never when an Oscar but the performances are solid, the story intriguing, and the action is fast paced. I truly laughed and cried (a little). Therefore I give it 3.5 state rings (out of four).