The Unseen Movie Review

Friday Night Lights

For most people outside of the United States, the idea that watching a bunch of schoolchildren play sport could actually be worth getting worked up about is almost incomprehensible. If you watch a football match, you want it to be decent, surely? You’d much rather see David Beckham kick a ball around than auntie Flo’s next door neighbour’s boy, Archie – wouldn’t you?

However, as with so many sporting movies, the sport itself is largely incidental here, with the off-pitch tensions being the prime focus. So it is to this film’s major credit that the central role of the coach has gone to an always excellent actor in Billy Bob Thornton. Unfortunately, however, the basic plot is almost identical to that of another recent US sport-based import, the Samuel L Jackson-starring basketball flick Coach Carter, released a couple of months ago.

Both Coach Carter and Friday Night Lights revolve around teams of academically underachieving dropouts from underachieving neighbourhoods whose only hope of any success in life comes from their success at their chosen sport. Both Coach Carter and Friday Night Lights revolve around superb and inspiring central performances from the actors playing the coach/mentor. Both films also received rave reviews in the US.

Even though the sport may be somewhat alien – with the perennial difficulty of trying to work out why these people need body armour to play rugby – the basic themes and message are entirely familiar. It’s in many ways a standard retread of a typical genre film, looking at coming of age rituals, the need to apply oneself to gain any kind of success in life, and the hopes that older generations always pin on the young.

While it may say little that’s new, this is nonetheless and accomplished and moving film which, focussed as it is around yet another great performance from Thornton and good supporting turns from the likes of the (now all grown up) Lucas Black of American Gothic fame as the youthful team members. It’s a travesty that Thornton hasn’t yet won an acting Oscar – although he did pick up a statuette in 1996 for Best Adapted Screenplay for Sling Blade. This is both the kind of film and kind of performance that might make the Academy sit up and take notice again, even though he should really have won for The Man Who Wasn’t There – and for that he didn’t even get a nomination.

Americans love their sport movies; us Brits seem to prefer the real thing. But if you’re tempted to see what the yanks get so worked up about with these things, this could be an ideal introduction to the genre.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 12:00 AM