Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Didn’t read the book, but I know it’s got some rabid fans, just like real high school football. Does the film tap into that passion? Let’s see what Mirajeff has to say on the subject...
Hey Harry, Mirajeff here again, this time with a review of Friday Night Lights, based on the fantastic H.G. Bissinger novel. Oh, and thanks for posting my Undertow review.
Rumor has it that there are some places in America where football is life. Permian High School in Odessa, Texas is one of these places. From the time boys are old enough to walk they are dressed in pads by football-obsessed Dads; men who cling to their state championship rings and scattershot memories of glory days long passed. The fathers, uncles, and yes, mothers who place such emphasis on football do so because as lifelong Odessa residents, they know first-hand that success on the football field is the only way out of town. Quarterback Mike Winchell’s mother tests him on the Panthers’ playbook over breakfast. Running back Billingsley has his hands duct taped to a football by his alcoholic father (Tim McGraw) so that he’ll learn to stop fumbling the pigskin. Star player Boobie Miles has college scouts packing the standings while his uncle, L.V., trumpets his nephew’s God-given talent. “Friday Night Lights” treats these football players, these high school heroes, like soldiers heading into battle. Over the course of the film, they learn that football isn’t war, it’s just a game, and the only ones they need to fight for are their town, their team, and themselves.
When I was first introduced to H.G. Bissinger’s book, I had never read the valor and compassion of sport captured so poignantly. The emotion with which Bissinger writes reflects on how passionately the 1988 Permian team played the game. Bissinger’s cousin and the film’s director, Peter Berg, retains the novel’s high adrenaline level, but sacrifices its central relationships along the way, resulting in an adaptation that comes up just a yard short. The film chronicles Permian’s unlikely run from undersized underdog to playoff powerhouse. The cast of mostly unknowns is led by Billy Bob Thornton as Coach Gaines, a man who has bought into the hype of his own team and its superstar. On the first day of preseason, Coach Gaines challenges his team to “be perfect.” But the team and the town are forced to wrestle with their own definitions of perfection as soon as Berg steals a page from the “Varsity Blues” playbook and Boobie goes down with a season-ending injury.
The football scenes carry some heavy weight, with bodies flipping and falling like candlepins, but the action suffers from MTV-style editing and the filmmakers’ flow of the game is terrible. When Permian is supposed to be playing poorly, Berg treats his audience to a series of missed tackles, turnovers, and opponents’ touchdowns and physical dominance. And when they’re winning, it seems like every play is either a 40-yard run or a 50-yard Hail Mary, which distracts from the film’s sense of realism.
There is an interesting trend amongst recent football movies to cast Oscar-winning actors as the coach, the central figure who the team must rally around. We’ve seen Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, and Jon Voight all manage the X’s and O’s, and Thornton is the latest club member to jump on the coaching bandwagon. His performance is admirable, in that he doesn’t overact or chew scenery like some of his contemporaries. Berg wisely hides Thornton in the shadows of the locker room, keeping his focus on the players, though the script does allow him to flex his muscle in a series of inspirational halftime speeches to corral the team. Gaines, hardly a brilliant strategist, is just a guy trying to get his kids to believe in themselves, and Thornton grounds him with a sense of moral responsibility to his players. He knows that talent can be overcome, but the team with more heart and hustle never fails.
The performances of the Permian players run the gamut from impressive to forgettable. Unfortunately, Lucas Black’s turn as Winchell falls into the latter category. I subscribe to the school of thought that the most personable player on the field should be the quarterback. Maybe the point of “Friday Night Lights” is that good leaders don’t care how they look, they just shut up and play the game. Winchell does not seem to display any leadership qualities, unless whimpering “Yes, sir” to every cliched challenge presented to him by Coach Gaines counts. Leader or not, Black allows Winchell to come off as lifeless and uninteresting. The script glazes over third-stringer Chris Comer (Lee Thompson Young) and silent brute Ivory Christian ( scene-stealer Lee Jackson), while Harvard-bound Brian Chavez (an underused Jay Hernandez) seems airbrushed into the film. The film suffers from not enough characterization or insight into these players’ personal lives. Instead, Berg chooses to waste screen time on an anti-climactic coin flip to get into the playoffs after a three-way tie, a luxury he can’t afford when adapting a 420 page book. The odd editorial choice seems even more baffling when Berg chooses to simulate the entire tournament until the championship game.
The film’s best performances come from Derek Luke and Garrett Hedlund as Boobie Miles and Don Billingsley. Luke makes Boobie sympathetic, a difficult task when Miles’ head is so big it can barely fit in his helmet. The heart of “Friday Night Lights” stems from Billingsley’s frustration with his abusive, drunk father, and some of the film’s most emotional scenes deal with Boobie and his uncle’s relationship. The best aspect of the movie is its electrifying music, courtesy of Deane Ogden and the up-and-coming band, Explosions in the Sky. With the exception of The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” the film resists the urge to showcase a flashy soundtrack in favor of dark, brooding instrumentation that lends the film its purest form of intensity.
Renaissance man Berg does his best to capture the gritty, hopeless feel of small town Texas so deftly described in Bissinger’s book. However, all the handheld video and lightning-fast cuts can’t mask the fact that the movie is still PG-13. The limited script by Berg and David Aaron Cohen reduces Thornton to lines like, “Wake up and get them cocky sons o’ guns!” To be fair, “Friday Night Lights” definitely makes for entertaining weekend viewing. Its depiction of the humanity that spurs from brutality is above average and steers clear of slapstick and sentimentality. However, the chance to transcend the sports film genre is wasted and sadly, the film doesn’t live up to its source material. Football fans are better off reading Bissinger’s book. Berg may have scored a touchdown, but his film misses the extra point.
Thanks, man. Nicely done.
"Moriarty" out.
