Football is life, the rest is just details

Rating: 7/10 (8 November 2012)

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.