| THE ODESSA FILE : Peter Berg's Friday Night Lights [7/10] |
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| Tuesday, 10 May 2005 | |
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American sport films traditionally fare badly in "foreign" cinemas - when, that is, they're allowed to travel at all: it's more than disappointing that the Kurt Russell ice-hockey epic Miracle went straight to DVD in the UK, despite rave reviews and better-than-expected US box-office. Friday Night Lights is unlikely to score a touchdown at the multiplexes here in Blighty, but even audiences for whom "I-right wiggle, 34 switch-play!" is the purest mumbo-jumbo might be pleasantly surprised if they give it a (ahem) try. Based on a best-selling, Pulitzer-Prize-winning non-fiction book - 1990's Friday Night Lights : A Town, A Team and A Dream by H G 'Buzz' Bissinger (reponsible for the article on which Shattered Glass was based) the film chronicles the hectic 1988 season of one West Texan high-school 'football' team - all aged around 17. They are the Panthers from Permian High in economically-depressed oiltown Odessa who, under the tough-but-fair guidance of Coach Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton), set their sights on winning the Texas State Championship. Director Berg and scriptwriter David Aaron Cohen don't so much dodge the cliches of the "inspirational" sports picture as boldly barrel them right into the audience's face: the cocky star (Derek Luke as Boobie) nobbled by cruel injury; the sensitive jock (Garrett Hedlund) struggling to cope with a thuggish dad (Tim McGraw) whose own glittering sports career long since yielded to the bottle; the all-or-nothing end-of-season game which goes right down to the final seconds. Speaking of that final game - many fans of Bissinger's book have taken offence at the way the movie occasionally plays fast and loose with the facts, although it's worth noting that the film's most implausible (and unexpectedly absorbing) segment, an "coin toss" among three managers to decide which of them misses out on the play-off, is a faithful representation of an actual event. At moments like this - and the rousing final game may well have you resisting the urge to stand up and cheer - Friday Night Lights really takes off. After a ropey start to his directing career with 1998's Very Bad Things (aka 'Very Bad Film'), sometime actor Berg progressed to deliver the pleasingly lowbrow action-comedy Welcome to the Jungle (aka The Rundown) in 2003, and comes up with a persuasively slick package here. Though perhaps over-fond of shaky hand-held cameras and artsy slo-mo, he frequently manages to immerse us in the raucous, hell-for-leather world of college sport, nimbly blending aspects of North Dallas Forty, Dazed and Confused, Slap Shot and even a little bit of Elephant. Friday Night Lights also benefits from Tobias Schliessler's Three Kings-style saturated-colour cinematography, some well-chosen 'period' pop/rock/rap on the soundtrack, an elegaic original score by David Torn and the aptly-named Explosions In The Sky, and, most of all, razor-sharp editing from David Rosenbloom and Colby Parker Jr. 'Coach' Berg has meanwhile marshalled on-the-button performances from his mostly-youthful cast (though Luke was 29 during filming) with Black - for many years the most striking and promising child-star in Hollywood - making a gratifyingly forceful transition to adult roles in what amounts, despite his end-credit fourth-billing, as the picture's emotional centre. So, there's much to commend Friday Night Lights - but in the end it does fall frustratingly short of the goal-line. There are often hints that Berg and Cohen are about deliver a stinging indictment of a situation in which coach Gaines is paid more than the high-school principal, and a hefty chunk of the town's dwindling resources has been sunk into the team and their impressive, state-of-the-art stadium. As Bissinger's subtitle indicates, his focus was as much on the town of Odessa as the Panthers. It's therefore more than a little unfortunate - and a real missed opportunity, given the times in which we now live - that the material's intriguing, ever-topical socio-economic and political angles are so squarely relegated to the 'bleachers'. Neil Young 10th May, 2005 FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS : [7/10] : USA (US-Ger) 2004 : Peter BERG : 117 mins seen at Odeon cinema, The Gate, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 10th May 2005 - press show
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