Friday Night Lights (Peter Berg, 2004)
Rating: 7.0
With incredible performances by Derek Luke as Boobie Miles and Tim McGraw as the drunken father of a player, and hands down the best music accompaniment to a sports film to date, Friday Night Lights takes a giant step forward for sports movies in general. Rather than being entirely banal entertainment, this film is semi poetic and touching at times. The final scene where the players names are getting removed from the roster, as well as the scenes of Boobie's struggle to realize the seriousness of his injury and his emotional response to the threat of shattered hopes are heartbreaking. I must say "semi" poetic because the film is still flawed, and there are still clichés and mainstream conventions aplenty. I was especially annoyed by the the playoff montage and the insistance on playing cheesey 80s rock music rather than sticking to Explosions in the Sky. Perhaps this isn't a cinematic masterpiece, but in comparison with some of the trivial garbage within the genre, this movie stands above most.
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