Friday Night Lights: Inside The Lives of High-School Athletes

Based on H.G. Bissinger's book, Peter Berg's Friday Night Lights thrills audiences and touches their hearts at the same time. Friday Night Lights does a tremendous job guiding the audience through the emotional highs and lows of the Permian Panthers of Odessa Texas. The movie excels in its development of characters, as a result it leaves the audience with a sense of attachment to the players and an understanding of football life in West Texas.

Focusing on the senior season of the 1988 Odessa Panthers the movie starts by introducing a team surrounded with tremendously high expectations to win a state championship. In a town where football is just as important as religion, in some cases it is religion, every citizen has ties to the Panther's football team. Whether they are alumni of the high school, state champions themselves, or towns people who think they know more than the coach, everyone has something to say about the team. With the impeccably high expectations to "be perfect" and the constant evaluation by literally everyone the pressure mounts on the Panther players. They have a lot to be pleased with though, the Panthers have players on both sides of the ball worthy of division 1 scholarships and arguably the best high school football player in the nation in "Boobie" Miles, but when Miles suffers a season ending knee injury in the first game of the season things quickly spiral out of control. The team loses. In this intensely competitive area of the south one loss can mean that the chances of playing for a championship may be lost. However, with their star down and out, the rest of the team gets their act together and the supporting players start to step up. The season is saved and the Panthers make the playoffs via an old fashioned tie breaker (a coin flip). Riding the emotions of a turn around season the Panthers make their way to the state championship game where they must face the faster, bigger, stronger, meaner, and...faster Dallas Carter team. After an ass whopping int he first half the Panthers yet again find themselves in a hole, however a second half turn around sets them up with an opportunity to win the game. A last minute drive that ends at the 1 inch line crowns Dallas Carter and crushes the hopes and dreams of an entire town. This movie isn't about winning and losing though, its about the characters, the development of each, and the connection that develops between the viewers and the characters on screen.
Boobie Miles, played by Derek Luke is a focus of much of the movie. A true physical specimen who has the size and all the tools that have college scouts going crazy over him. As his uncle explains he can run the ball, catch the ball, throw the ball, snap it and kick the extra point. Boobie can do everything. With all his skill of course comes a huge ego, Boobie isn't the best teammate around as he insults his fellow players and underclassmen. He knows he is talented and he boasts about it constantly. He thinks he doesn't need to practice as hard and he thinks that the only opportunity for the Panthers to win is when Boobie is in. We don't see a different side of Boobie until his injury, when he realizes that his hopes and dreams of playing professional football are done. A key moment for Boobie is when he finally breaks down and cries to his uncle, explaining that the only thing he knows how to do is play football. There is also a race struggle present in Boobie's character, he has a dead beat father, and he isn't smart enough to excel in school. He is the stereotypical inner city type kid who only knows one thing, for Bobbie that one thing is football.
Mike Winchell, the quarterback of the Panthers team is another main character and his struggle is entirely different from Boobie's. Mike is left as the only person to take care of his mother who's issues are never fully addressed in the movie. She is however crazy and very demanding of her son. Winchell's character is soft spoken and he keeps most of his emotions bottled up. He wants one thing, to leave Odessa. He makes lots of mistakes on the field due to his lack of athletic ability, however what he does lack he seems to make up for in heart and determination. Winchell truly leaves everything on the field in the state championship game, and by the end actually sheds blood, sweat and tears. Winchell can only be respected for his efforts and his ability to cope with his family struggles.
The last character that im going to discuss is Don Billingsley, a fullback for the Panthers that has a serious problem holding onto the football. More importantly though he has a serious problem with his abusive, alcoholic father. The situations that Billingsley's encounters with his father are heartbreaking and Don seems to never do anything right in his father's eyes. Don's father was a Panther and won a state championship when he was in high school and he sees his son a a disgrace and an embarrassment to their name. It isn't until the very end of the movie when Don's father makes a turn around and in a very heart warming moment at the end of the state championship game Don's father places his championship ring on his sons finger.
With such a great cast of characters it is hard for audiences not to become emotionally attached to them throughout the course of the movie. This is what makes Friday Night Lights such a great experience and pleasure to watch. Despite the unconventional story of a team that doesn't actually win it all Friday Night Lights is a great sports film.
Score 10-10