1. Friday Night Lights (2004)

These will conatain light spoilers.

So I bought this for £3 in HMV. I had been eying it up for a while and finally spent that massive amount the other weekend. Yesterday I settled down to watch it.

From the first minute it is obvious there is a quality here. The camerawork is similar to the winning formula used in Greengrass' Bourne films, shaky and hand held, making the action that much more real. Being British and not a fan of American football the rules of the game were lost on me, yet the action is faultless and plight of the players as they come up against the brick walls of the other teams was obvious and supplemented by their stories.

Neither are the characters stories. As cliched as they are, the players stories are presented with more emotional realism than I have seen before in a movie. From the player pressured by his sick mother, to the one pressured by his drunk and abusive dad. The story of Boobie is the most over done, the star player (Derek Luke) injured early in the season. But when the scene where he collects his stuff from the locker, then lets out his worries to his uncle in the car are scenes packed with emotional intensity provided by Luke in that role.

Billy Bob Thornton as the coach is an inspired piece of casting. He fills the role out, suits it so much providing a confidence and bravado in the face of the pressures of his job. These pressures are an overriding theme of the film, the towns hopes are all mounted on the success of their team and we feel each failure and jump with glee at each win. An other theme is that of racism, and the different values of the towns; this is highlighted as the two teams in the final discuss where to hold the final

The final game is exciting, the handheld cam making us feel every crunch and helping the viewer to identify with the players much more than I have witnessed before, though the ending surprised me. They don't win. At first I was shocked, how could I have followed this team for 2 hours and now be presented with this? But then, through the emotional reunion of Garrett Hedlund's character and his father we see that they have won, the weight of the towns expectations have been lifted and they are free, and it's the next generation to pick up where they left off. This however was painfully symbolised by Lucas Black's character throwing a football to a group of kids. For a film full of emotional intelligence why did this point need to be shoved down our throat so obviously? But this is a hard film to fault, I was going to point out the lack of focus, got halfway through that and stopped, realising that it all fitted together perfectly.

So yeah. Friday Night Lights is a fantastic film, don't simply dismiss it as another sports movie. Yes, it's cliched, but it's presented so well and is so involving to watch. 9/10