"Friday Night Lights" is a screen adaptation of H.G. Bissinger's nonfiction book, unread by me. Also, I know almost nothing of and have very little interest in football, and I have no knowledge at all of Odessa outside of what's on the DVD. I mention these things to make it clear that I don't have any idea whether or not the film accurately reflects real life—all I can do is give my personal reaction to it as a movie.
A docudrama, "Friday Night Lights" chronicles the 1988 season of an Odessa high school football team, and there's lots of exciting footage of games. I was very impressed with the film's cinematography and editing, and I found the soundtrack music evocative.
As the team's coach, Billy Bob Thornton gives an outstanding performance. Team members are portrayed by charismatic young actors like Derek Luke, Lucas Black, and Jay Hernandez, although they seemed to me a little old to be entirely convincing as high school students. I think country music star Tim McGraw does a good job in a nonsinging role as yesteryear's gridiron hero who incessantly rides his teenage son for not playing better football.
I expected "Friday Night Lights" would ignore racial issues, but that isn't quite the case. On one occasion, a white woman casually uses the N-word to refer to a black player, and I suppose that represents other similar occurrences. Later in the film there's a negotiation where race is a major factor in the selection of referees for the championship game, and the opposing coaches talk about it in terms of zebras.
However, it seems to me the main issue raised by "Friday Night Lights" is this: Is it okay for a community to tightly bind up its identity with adolescent competitors? My interpretation of the movie is that while it acknowledges there are some negatives to this arrangement, it ultimately answers yes, at least for its version of 1988 Odessa.
But for me, social issues were of only peripheral interest in "Friday Night Lights." I enjoyed watching Billy Bob Thornton, I liked the characters, the well-paced narrative swept me along in its flow, and I found the film's strong sense of place convincing.
My favorite bonus material on the DVD was the 22 minutes of deleted/extended scenes. The deleted scene that sticks in my mind is where a heavyhearted Odessa resident comes to the coach's house and says to him about an injured player, "That boy carried the hopes, the dreams, and the soul of this town on his shoulders. We fed off of him… And now we gonna throw him away like garbage. Shame on us, Coach Gaines. All of us."
Another bonus material I found interesting is the 23-minute featurette titled "The Story of the 1988 Permian Panthers," which has aired on television on ESPN. Here you can see some of the real-life guys who played on the team depicted in the movie, but they are about 16 years older than their counterparts in the film. One of them, Brian Chavez (portrayed by Jay Hernandez), graduated from Harvard and became a criminal lawyer in Odessa.
The DVD provides feature-length audio commentary by H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger, who wrote the nonfiction book on which the movie is based, and Peter Berg, who directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay. I found their commentary informative for the first several minutes, but it soon degenerated, and I don't recommend listening to it for very long. Actually, I was a bit surprised the commentary existed since the box containing the DVD doesn't mention it.
In addition to the bonus materials I've discussed above, the DVD contains three more, but none of them caught my fancy. On the next page, I've listed all the special features on the "Friday Night Lights" DVD.
Continued on the Next Page: DVD Details
