Friday Night Lights (2004)
Okay, so I did this in totally the wrong order. I watched the TV series first and then the original movie. There's only so much you can pack into a 2 hour film, especially when trying to chronicle the journey of a high school football team through an entire season of the game. The TV show has the luxury of time, and uses it to brilliant effect, exploring each of its numerous characters in depth and spacing out the highs and lows of the drama. The film simply can't compete on this level. What it can do is pack an awful lot of football, heart, brotherhood, pride, loss, anger and joy into glorious widescreen bliss.
As the team coach, Billy Bob takes the ostensible lead role but shares equal screen time with our small set of core lead players. He does brilliant work with the role, playing the elation and frustration and anger of the man, but he's not Kyle Chandler who will forever be the perfect football coach in my mind. Similarly the high schools leads are great but suffer in comparison to their TV counterparts. Worst off is Connie Britton whose role as the coach's wife is cut to only a handful of lines, though she was more than compensated by taking on the same role in the Tv show where she could truly shine.
Ultimately this isn't really a film about football as a game. It's the macguffin around which director and co-writer Berg can explore small town America, it's dreams and hopes and sense of community. Of an endless cycle only some are destined to escape. Of loyalty and brotherhood and striving to be perfect.
Watch it, and then watch the TV series. You won't be disappointed.
5/5
