Viewed in
2014
Formats
HDTV
Premise
Based on Buzz Bissinger's book, which profiled the economically depressed town of Odessa, Texas and their heroic high school football team, The Permian High Panthers.
Loved
Powerful ending.
Liked
Tim McGraw, realistic portrayal of unreasonable expectations.
Disliked
Lack of realistic sports scenes.
Thoughts
It's often been said that Texas loves their high school football. Too much. This film genuinely captured that.
Throughout, I got a really good feel for the 17, 18 year old kids inhabiting this sometimes irrational world. There was a nice mix of ego, self-delusion, injuries, self-doubt, non-stop pressure, and ghosts of the past, the last part wonderfully portrayed by Tim McGraw. As father of Garrett Hedlund, a former champ, McGraw was bitter, over-demanding, and scary. The embodiment of a universe that unfairly forces kids to behave like adults.
Another great moment was the hilarious scene when the coach, played solidly by Billy Bob Thorton, was accosted by some disappointed, almost-threatening locals in a parking lot. Overall, director Peter Berg did a good job of just focusing on the Thorton and three players. It gave good arcs, especially to Derek Luke and Hedlund-McGraw, instead of just cramming in a ton of short, emotionally vapid stories.
An interesting move by Berg was creating a soundtrack in which Public Enemy brash songs collide with Explosions in the Sky ethereal instrumentals. It gave it a time-and-place that was nostalgic and epic. The combination of writing, directing and music culminated in an amazing, haunting payoff in the obligatory "big game".
While I loved the emotional expressions of the games, I was bugged by the lack of lucid football action. Look, I don't need to see sports sequences in a beat-for-beat manner. But like any action scene, I need it to be story-told in a logical manner, not just coaches yelling, bodies crashing into each other, and then suddenly the score changes. It could've done a better job of showing how our protagonists changed strategies or overcame opponents.
Lastly, while it wasn't the fault of the film, watching the amount of head trauma inflicted onto the characters felt odd. It's been ten years since this came out. We now live in a world where our concussion-consciousness expands daily. As I watched these scenes, I couldn't help but think about what we're doing to our country's youth in real life.
I've never read the book, nor have I yet to watch the TV series. Having seen Friday Night Lights, I definitely liked the realistic portrayals and tales of high school football life. Not sure if I saw enough that would demand a TV series to be made though. (I realize the general consensus was that the series was way better than the movie.)
