The people of Odessa, Texas, take high school football seriously, and "Friday Night Lights" treats it with just as much reverence.
I saw the film in a theater full of high school football teams, and rather than being the rowdy, major league tools that football players usually are, they sat in respectful silence. I guess for them, this was like going to church. I have no such veneration for football, but "Friday Night Lights" is a humdinger of a sports film, shot so it has the bleak, stark colors of a war movie, with gritty handheld camerawork to match. This is serious business, this high school football. It's based on the true story of Odessa's 1988 Permian High School football season, as recounted in H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger's book "Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream." The film, directed by Bissinger's cousin Peter Berg and adapted by Berg and David Aaron Cohen, embraces wholeheartedly every sports-flick cliché, from the paternal coach to the hotshot quarterback to the thrilling last-minute victories -- but man, does it ever make them work. Berg stays true to the film's real-life roots and recreates everything matter-of-factly. Scenes that would be awkwardly melodramatic in lesser films -- a player learning his injuries will prevent him from ever taking the field again; a young man's run-ins with his abusive father -- are charged with emotion, but the emotion feels honest, rather than maudlin.
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