Friday Night Lights shine on football

The streets of Odessa are empty and the stores are closed. The west Texas town has shut down a bit early on a Friday night in the fall as a result of the most important season of the year-high school football season.

The population of the economically ravaged town has migrated to Ratliff Stadium, the 20,000-seat home of the Odessa Permian Panthers. Peter Berg’s Friday Night Lights, an adaptation of H.G. Bissinger’s novel about the Panthers, captures the magnitude of high school football in a small southern town.

From the beginning, Friday Night Lights sets a dramatically different tone than feel-good sports movies such as Hoosiers and Remember the Titans. High school athletics is not presented as the solution for the young men on the team; it’s the problem.

Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) holds the most scrutinized position in town, head coach of the Panthers. It is rumored that he gets paid $60,000 a year, significantly more than the principal. However with the position comes immense pressure.

The years of the Panthers’ four previous state championships are prominently displayed as a reminder that losing is simply not a viable option. Following a loss in the second game of the 1988 season, Gaines returns home to find his yard littered with “for sale” signs.

Thornton, the son of a high school basketball coach, does a terrific job of portraying Gaines. He shows that he is the undisputed leader of the team and earns the right to deliver a motivational speech near the end of the film, as part of a series of chilling moments.

Gaines’s job is not made any easier when his star running back, James “Boobie” Miles (Derek Luke), sustains a career-threatening knee injury early in the season.

Miles is incredibly upset by the news that the injury could keep him off the football field, refusing to believe that he is destined to do anything other than run a football.

He can barely read the letters he receives from colleges, but Miles claims that he has an “A” in the only subject that matters-football.

With every attempt to pass another test on his aching knee, Miles sees his once bright future becoming progressively darker.

Mike Winchell (Lucas Black) and Don Billingsley (Garrett Hedlund) have far more than the opposition to worry about when they step on the field. Both are constantly fighting against personal demons that they cannot escape.

Win or lose, Winchell, the star quarterback, comes home to an ill mother. The situation at home is inescapable for Winchell and is obviously a hindrance to his play.

At times, football seems much more important to his mother than it is to the star quarterback. She spends countless hours drilling her son on the team’s playbook and seems to be more excited about his success than Winchell himself.

Billingsley has to fight ghosts of Odessa Permian past every time he steps onto the field. His abusive father, Charles (Tim McGraw), was a star for the Panthers and refuses to let go of the past.

Luke, Black and Hedlund are all very convincing in their performances, capturing the emotion of the audience. By the end of the film, the crowd in the theater was cheering wildly as they succeeded on the field.

McGraw also shows great promise as an actor, doing a good job of being a “bad guy.” He is disturbing as an abusive father, but remains very human at all times, keeping this subplot from becoming implausible.

The multitude of exceptional performances makes the social angle of the movie much more plausible. All of the characters are seen not simply as football players, but people who play the game of football.

Although the movie emphasizes relationships off of the field, the portrayal of the game is extremely realistic. The physical pain that results from the game demonstrates the fact that very few players are able to escape a contest without some sort of minor injury.

Friday Night Lights accomplishes its mission, and Berg does not pull any punches in translating Bissinger’s novel to the big screen. The story is well worth the price of admission.