The best sports movie ever released on October 6, 2004.

Rating: 7/10 (7 February 2005)

The thing that makes Friday Night Lights an impressive sports movie (which is saying a lot since sports movies have long since been a battered and abused dead horse) is that it is a true story. Well, it's based on a true story. Loosely. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that it was inspired by a true story. The phrase "dramatized for effect" is putting it very, very lightly. That being said, however, I certainly enjoyed the movie. It is a very well-made film, it has a great story, the performances are outstanding, and believe it or not, the movie doesn't get cloyingly, achingly cheesy until the closing scene.
The vast majority of the reason that I watched the movie was Billy Bob Thornton, and he delivered a great performance but I still can't tell how much of his performance was a genuine effort to accurately portray the coach that he was playing and how much of it was making fun of Texans. He does, after all, burst forth with such exclamations as "Dad gum it" and, my favorite, "Great grandma's drawers!" Then again, I've never been to Texas, I have no idea what high school football coaches talk like. Besides, it could have been the production team working with the MPAA ratings board to ensure that the movie got a PG-13 rating.
My initial lack of interest in the movie was diluted by reminding myself that it is based on true events, on a real game, which surely must have been a hell of a game. I've been to tons of high school football games, when I was in high school my brother was the captain of the best team that our school had ever seen. The first seven games rarely was a touchdown ever scored by an opposing team, much less a game won. Then on game eight we had a night exactly like the last game in this movie, so it had an even more dramatic effect on me.
The thing that really bothered me about the movie stems from a feeling that I have about sports in general rather than about this movie or about sports movies in general. I spent a few weeks in Spain a year ago and the thing that really amazed me was the sense of community that was there. A woman sent her five-year-old son to show my father and I how to get to a local restaurant that we were looking for. Two complete strangers and she didn't think twice. At 1am the central park was crowded with neighborhood kids playing and laughing while their parents ate and drank coffee at nearby sidewalk cafes, I was stunned at how welcoming it was.
Then I came back to America and the first thing I saw on the way home from the Sacramento airport was a car with a bumper sticker that said "Die Laker Scum."
Not only is this Americans wishing death on other Americans over something as definitively arbitrary as basketball, but doing it in a time of war. It reminds me of the arbitrary meaninglessness of the roots of tension between the Hutu's and the Tutsi's in Hotel Rwanda. Luckily relatively little violence ever breaks out. And by the way, a great many people have told me that I'm being too harsh and that I need to lighten up about that, so don't e-mail me and think you're clever. Besides  DIE LAKER SCUM. Is it really ME that needs to lighten up?
I have a feeling that the opposing team in Friday Night Lights is one of the more dramatized parts of the movie, as they resemble movie monsters more than even the most aggressive high school football players. It's easy to throw in shots like one of them kicking a players helmet in his face as he lies on the field hurt, but it belittles the story that is being told, which doesn't need little bits of violence thrown into it. It is a strong enough story on its own, but evidently the writers and director didn't think so.
I really wish that they hadn't felt the need to end with a heavily manufactured, slow motion ending that had a sappy screenwriters boot-prints all over it, because it was even less necessary than the tidbits of random violence.
The movie is strongest when it does what it spends most of its time doing, which is presenting this tiny town in Texas that places all stock and hope into its high school football team because not only is it the most interesting thing happening in the town, but it is their one means of proving that their town has meaning. They are not some obscure little town in the Texas desert but the home of the 1988 Texas State Champions.
This does, of course, put enormous pressure on the players, who are forced to grow up far too quickly because not only their parents but their entire town is already looking to them for support and salvation. The options that many of the players have for the future outside of professional football also illustrates one of the more pressing dangers of high school football, one that has nothing to do with injuries.
By the way, the DVD for Friday Night Lights has a wonderful documentary about the true story of the 1988 team, in which several of the key players get together to talk about the days that have now been immortalized on film. While I certainly enjoyed it, I am shocked that no one thought to put the original game on the DVD. Maybe they were worried that everyone would see how different it was?