movie review - FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

The greatest football movie I've ever seen. Nothing else is even close. If you played high school football, this movie will get to you. In fact, during the movie, I was having flashbacks to my senior year, hearing speeches my coach gave me, remembering what it was like to be a senior, to wear that purple jacket with the big yellow "L." And yes, this movie will make guys cry. I didn't but it was close. And the guy I went with got teary.

Anyway, here's the plot, based on a true story. Set in 1988, a school in Odessa Texas is gearing up for another great football season. We're following 3 time state champ Permian High. Their mascot is the panthers, but for some reason, "mojo" is written on everything. Well since most readers of this grew up in Louisiana, we know how real high school football is. But in Texas, it's ten times more important. Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thorton) is the second year coach that makes more money then the principle. His team is lead by an all-american running back and public enemy wannabe Boobie Miles (Derek Luke). The quarterback, Mike Winchell (Lucas Black), is a serious mama's boy who's expected to not fumble as he hands it off to Boobie. And he never smiles. The backup runningback, Don Billingsley (Garrat Hedlund) fumbles a lot and gets abused numerous times by his alcoholic and former-state-champ-runningback-dad (an impressive Tim McGraw). On defense, we have the stong safety Brian Chavez (Jay Hernandez) who's going to Harvard after graduation, and lineman Ivory Christian (Lee Jackson) who doesn't talk to anyone and is called "preacher-boy" by Boobie. Well, after scoring 5 touchdowns in the first game, Boobie tears his ACL, and a team built around one guy must step up and find new ways to win. The film gives equal time to the coach and the players, and it never becomes an "X's and O's" movie about football. It's character driven. And the relatively unknown actors makes it seem that you're never looking at movie stars, just some kids in high school. There are many powerful scenes and powerful performances and the football action is as good as anything made. And the payoff for experiencing all these emotion ups and downs is the state championship game, which is given a full quarter of the movie. It feels like you relly watched an entire game by the end of it. Firday Night Lights was directed by Peter Berg, who's only other film directing credits are the awful "Very Bad Thing (IMDB score = 5.7), and "The Rundown (6.5)," which I haven't seen. He does an outstanding job, giving the movie a documentary feel. The film is grainy and not polished, and there are plenty of establishing shots in between the mini-episodes as the football season goes on. And during the games, you don't get any shots that a normal football television crew couldn't get. No helmet cams or camera on the back of the runner shots. Just sidelines and endzones. This is what gives it the feeling of watching a real game here.

Go see this movie! Even non football fans will be sucked into this story. This is the best movie I've seen all year folks. IMDB.com's user rating here is 7.2 (on a scale of 10), and usually anything over a seven is great! Go see this now, in the theater, on a friday night.

The Sneaky Cheetah's Grade: A