If you're not a football fan, Friday Night Lights may scare you. If you are a football fan, it still may, and that's the greatest strength of Peter Berg's adaptation of H.G. Bissinger's 1990 non-fiction book about one small Texas town's obsession with high school football. Berg takes a measured, if not entirely neutral, approach to his portrayal of the pressures and hopes that the players, coaches and townspeople of Odessa face as the Panthers of local Permian High School attempt to win the state championship.
Berg and co-writer David Aaron Cohen condense Bissinger's book into a single season, 1988, as new coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) leads the Panthers on their quest for state. The players we get to know fit sports-movie archetypes well, but at the same time Berg allows them a little more depth and nuance than you might expect. There's stoic quarterback Mike Winchell (Lucas Black), who's filled with self-doubt; flashy running back Boobie Miles (Derek Luke), whose entire future rests on playing football; and insecure Don Billingsley (Garrett Hedlund), whose father (country singer Tim McGraw in an auspicious screen debut) was a state-champion Panther in his day and expects nothing but the best from his son. A couple of other players get a bit of screen time, but these three are the only ones we end up feeling like we really know.
The pressures put on the players and coach are enormous, as the residents of Odessa, a rural town with a sagging economy, see the game as an extension of themselves and only feel worthwhile when the team is winning. It's a lot for these teenagers to live up to, and Berg never pretends that they have it easy. There is remarkably little glory in the film, even when the team wins. Mike tells the coach that he feels desperate and lost whether the Panthers win or lose, and you can tell he's not the only one.
The pressure comes from within as well, as it's clear that the only ticket to a prosperous future the players have comes from football, and without athletic scholarships it's doubtful they'll go to college or ever escape bleak Odessa. A college recruiter reminds Mike at one point that the game is supposed to be about having fun, but there's very little fun in most of the games in the film's first half. Toward the end, though, as the Panthers enter a showdown with their cross-state rivals for the championship title, Berg gives in to far too many sports-movie clichés, with the Panthers as the scrappy underdogs who need to pull off a last-minute, come-from-behind victory, and Gaines giving the requisite stirring half-time speech.
It's too bad that the glory of the game ends up outweighing its costs, because Friday Night Lights could just as easily have been a scathing indictment of the football-centric culture that dominates places like Odessa. It's clear that the game destroys its players as much as it builds them up, and the actors all do an excellent job of illustrating that dichotomy. Thornton and Black both make complex, sympathetic characters out of their archetypes, and Berg shoots the film—especially the scenes off the field—with a gritty, naturalistic style that seems more suited to an art-house drama than a football movie. It's his assured, careful direction that makes the film more compelling than it could have been if played broader.
The film eventually pulls back from the clichés for a strong, bittersweet ending, and Berg and his cast deserve credit for elevating this material above its potential triteness. If you're not a football fan, Friday Night Lights won't make you one, but if you are, it will give you a good deal more to think about than your average gridiron flick.