The based-on-a-true story takes us to the small Texas town of Odessa in 1988, where Friday night football is the highlight of the week for most of the town. Coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) is arguably more important than the mayor and certainly receives more day to day criticism. As it important as football is to the fans, however, it’s not nearly as important as it is to the players, whose lives depend on their success in many ways. For many of these boys, getting a college scholarship is their ticket out of the town – and more importantly, out of an economically depressed life.

Though this story is about the team, the film focuses on three of the primary players. Boobie Miles (Derek Luke) is the star running back whose mouth is as big as his abilities. In the first game of the season, Miles tears his ACL, and must come to grips with the thought that his NFL dreams may be lost. Though we’re given little reason to sympathize with this load-mouthed ego-maniac, it’s still terribly affecting when Miles watches some garbage men on his street and realizes that may be his own fate.

Mike Winchell (Lucas Black) is the star quarterback and Don Billingsley (Garrett Hedlund), another running back, are both under extraordinary pressure from their parents to succeed – particularly Don, whose father (Tim McGraw) becomes abusive when he’s not performing well. These scenes are hauntingly sad. When Don’s father tells him he has to do well because this is the only time in his life that he’s going to have the chance to succeed, you know he’s talking about his own life, and the sorrow that he still feels because he’s never amounted to more than a great high school football player himself.

Friday Night Lights is perpetually heartrending, but it’s to its credit: the film is painstakingly real. Without a touch of gloss, there’s not a moment in the film that you sense that everything isn’t absolutely real – and there’s nothing scarier than the ruthlessness of reality.

Director Peter Berg phenomenally captures this stark reality through his direction and camerawork. Friday Night Lights is shot on a gritty film stock that verges on looking like a documentary and often uses a handheld camera that results in scenes that are as visually shaky as they are emotionally.

Friday Night Lights is not all off field, however; we get our fair share of game time action, and it’s some of the finest sports film work I’ve ever seen. The intensity and passion of the players on the field match the intensity and passion of the players’ lives off the field – and Berg’s powerhouse filmmaking matches the intensity and passion of both.

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