People take this game way to seriously. Do not teach your kids these values it will only screw them up later in life. But then again this is "Texas".

Based on the award winning book by H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights provides the audience with an inside look at the magnitude of high school football in Texas. The film follows several players, as well as the head coach, as the Permian Panthers attempt to win the State Championship during the 1988 season. The roles of Mike Winchell and Don Billingsley are portrayed well by Lucas Black and Garrett Hedlund. Through their performances, Black and Hedlund were able to show the pressure and stress that football players felt. At one point in the film, one football player says, "relax we're seventeen" and Billingsley responds, "do you feel seventeen?". This quote emphasizes how in Texas, high school football players are held to higher standards than most teenagers. The best performance came from Billy Bob Thornton though, as he played Head Coach Gary Gaines. Thornton does a great job in showing the anxiety of a football coach in Texas. It was cool to see Billy Bob Thornton and Lucas Black together again, eight years after they starred in Sling Blade. The film is directed well throughout, but the final scene stood out the most to me. The scene consists of three football players standing in the parking lot of the stadium a couple days after their last high school game ever. As the players bid farewell to their careers, you can see how a huge part of their lives is over. High school football really isn't like it is in Texas anywhere else. Through excellent directing and acting, the film is successful in highlighting the enormous impact that high school football has on small towns in Texas.

Perfectly encapsulating not only the high stakes sport that is American college football but the trials, triumphs and all in between for those growing up in an environment that builds pressure upon shoulders not yet acclimatised to the highs and lows of adult life, Peter Berg's frenetic and heartfelt Friday Night Lights is a stunningly crafted example of the power of sporting themed movies and a career highpoint for many involved.Based upon H.G. Bissinger's book which is itself centred around the real life Permian High Panthers football team that was the heart and soul of the small Texan town of Odessa in the late 1980's, Friday Night Lights is not merely built for an excuse to deliver action packed staging's of football matches but is built to allow heartfelt and important messages to play out around it, so much so that this moderately financially successful film spawned the well liked Emmy winning TV series of the same name.Berg (who at the time was better known as a character actor in films like Cop Land and Smokin Aces) displays a natural talent as a story teller here, as well as a fine orchestrator of his young actors (who almost pass as 17/18 year olds) and as we're introduced to the Panthers team from Billy Bob Thornton's well-meaning and measured Coach Gaines, Lucas Black's conflicted quarter back Mike Winchell, Garret Hedlund's pressured Don Billingsley and Derek Luke's flashy star playmaker Boobie Miles, it's easy to be pulled into this world of eventual pettiness and goal driven attitudes that consumes all those that inhabit it.These characters feel alive, cut from reality, the town they live in eats, drinks and thrives off them and their sport and Friday Night Lights showcases a realistic view of what the college football scene represents to those that follow it. There's the young men who have had their chance to build their life upon one successful year, those that have found success in the arena and now struggle to live out of it and those that merely find themselves driven by the idea of the team's success, an outlet if you like to allow them to forget their woes. It's in this broad spectrum of characters and snippets of Odessa life that we get that sets Friday Night Lights aside from other films of its ilk and become something more, something truly special.Much more than a mere sports movie, Friday Night Lights is quintessential viewing for movie lovers even if sport is but a foreign occurrence to them. From Berg, the fantastic soundtrack by Explosions in the Sky through to Billy Bob Thornton and an impressive young (at the time) cast with standout turns from Black, Hedlund and Luke, Friday Night Lights saw the nigh on perfect culmination of material and participants come together to deliver one of, it not the best sport movies ever made.5 coin tosses out of 5

Really great football movie following a West Texas High School team from an dying town where "winning isn't everything, its the only thing." The movie is based on a super popular book and chronicles the entire 1988 season of the Permian High Panthers.Its been filmed almost documentary style, so that at times the camera work is shaky (always hard hitting) and you really get to know all the characters involved on and off the field (players, coaches, mothers, fathers, pastors, boosters, fans and families struggling with ongoing personal conflicts.) These boys all want to escape their small town and the pressure placed on them from family and the townsfolk is enormous, with the general theme being that this fight for the state championship will be the most important thing they ever do with their lives.There are some great performances here, Billy Bob Thornton as Coach Gary Gaines is kinda mind-blowing, he is just so good. I mean all he really does is spout off football-isms but wow, he also conveys so much more. And Tim McGraw was a huge surprise here as an abusive alcoholic, reliving his glory days father to one of the players (complete A-hole). Lucas Black also impressed as did the storyline following Boobie and his Uncle, just heartbreaking. Up there as one of the best sports movies I've seen. 11/5/14