First Take Classics: Friday Night Lights - how to be ready for the weekend

SYNOPSIS: Based on H.G. Bissinger’s book, which profiled the economically depressed town of Odessa, Texas and their heroic high school football team, The Permian High Panthers.

A film about American football from 2004 on TheJackSmit.com? Yes, we are doing this - and not just because of the novelty of a film called Friday Night Lights being reviewed just days before a certain rugby team play under them (#FillTheAJ is all I shall say). Gridiron football is a way of life over in the States, you just have to see the hype around the Super Bowl to understand this, but college and high school football is on another level. Enter the 1988 season for the Permian Panthers. A story that had to be adapted into a book, then a film.

Pete Berg - the man who would go on to direct Hancock, Patriots Day and many more - is in charge, and he creates a relatively well paced 1 hour 58 minute film that really showcases the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of sport, especially at what would be considered academy level in most English games. Admittedly the script does have a real ESPN 30 for 30 vibe to it, namely as TV writer David Aaron Cohen co-wrote the script with Berg, but ultimately, like the book it’s adapted from, it has to be like this to truly tell this story (with a few Hollywood tweaks for understandable reasons). It is shot very well by Tobias Schleissler, and the score spearheaded by Brian Reitzell, David Torn and Texan band Explosions in the Sky (who know that Odessa area well) comes in at just the right times.

Onto the cast, and it’s obvious where to start: Billy Bob Thornton as Coach Gaines. Characters like that are not easy to play, especially when you have big motivational speeches of that ilk written into the script. But he just nails it. Simple as that. Supporting him is Garrett Hedlund (in one of his first roles), Derek Luke, Tim McGraw and Amber Heard, but ultimately this film comes alive through its writing. Adapting a story like this is a difficult task, but the cast and crew just know how to make it work. Obviously American audiences lapped this film up on release (with a spinoff TV series arriving in 2006), but even on British soil you can really understand how big a deal it was for that team.

THE VERDICT

With the ever rising popularity of the NFL on these shores, it might be coming up on 20 years old but this film still packs quite a punch. It does deal with some heavy topics (but not as much as the book does), and ultimately, this shows what sport can do to a team, a community, and its wider family. There truly is nothing like a Friday night under those lights.

RATING: 4/5