Friday Night Lights

Original post: 19th September 2007

Friday Night Lights is the film based on H. G. Bissinger’s book of the same name that documents the journey of a high school American football team and the community of economically-depressed Odessa, Texas whose hopes and dreams live and die with the Permian Panthers.

Having read Eyeshield 21 and become obsessed imbued with the spirit of American football, I was into this film from the very beginning. Not surprisingly, it did not fail to deliver.

-contains spoilers-

“Boobie” Miles (Derek Luke) is the team’s star player (running back.) He is head-strong, self-confident (*cough* shiny hot too *cough*) and has his bright future ahead of him with offers from football colleges all around America pouring in.

Mike Winchell (Lucas Black – remember him as Kruger from Jarhead?) is the quarterback who is known as a man who doesn’t smile. He struggles to to play consistently and is often pressured into decisions by others. Winchell is torn between wanting to following his dream and looking after his mother.

The fullback Don Billingsley (Garrett Hedlund – Patroclus in Troy) struggles in his relationship with his father, an ex-Panther whose team won the state championship and who is constantly disappointed by what he sees as sub-par performance from his son.

Chris Comer (Lee Thompson Young) is the third-string running back, constantly living in the shadow of Boobie Miles and has a fear of getting hit and being injured.

Brian Chavez (Jay Hernandez) is the safety, harassed by team mates due to his lack of football spirit but is in fact the only one whose future after high school football is assured.

After their first game of the season Boobie Miles tears his ACL and while it is unlikely that he will ever play football again, the Odessa-based doctor can’t bring himself to tell Miles. The Panthers suffer from loss of confidence and lose their next game. Coach Gary Gaines is pressured by angry members of the community calling for his resignation.

However, for their next game, Comer manages to surmount his fear of injury and successfully takes the place of Miles as running back. The Panthers are then followed by a four-game winning streak, broken only by a close game in which Winchell throws too high and the Permian Panthers face a three-team draw for a place in the district representatives to the state championship. It is also in this game that Miles is finally faced the reality of his injury and is carried off the field for the second time.

The two teams are decided by a coin toss and the Permian Panthers are in the running once again. However, this is a bitter victory and with the now permanent loss of Miles, the film reaches its low point in which the players are all lost in their despair.

With the seemingly cliché plot so far and the same stony-faced, ego/angst-ridden characters as any other sport-based film, Friday Night Lights may just as well have been another inspirational, rags-to-riches movie.

It wasn’t.

I fully expected them to win the state championship despite all the odds, as it was Hollywood, after all.

But they didn’t.

The Permian Panthers made it to the finals but lost against the Dallas Carter team (all hope had yet again rested on Winchell’s play.)

But at the end of their last game, even though it seems that their hearts are broken by the loss, each of the players realise that winning and losing are the same thing. Their real victory was the journey that got them here, despite all the odds. Billingsly and his father reconcile, Winchell finds that he can shine on the field and Miles comes to terms with his injury and is ready to leave his fame and glory behind him.

It is interesting to watch this façade of male bravado slowly crack and fall to pieces as the film progressed. These boys forced to take on responsibilities and set their priorities at such a young age and all pressured by the hopes and dreams of their community.

Chavez: “We gotta lighten up. We’re seventeen.”
Billingsly: “Do you feel seventeen?”
Winchell: “I don’t feel seventeen.”

They cry, they suffer and sometimes they buckle under pressure from all sides, but these boys have found that the love they all have for their team is what has carried them so far.

I loved the emotional journey of Friday Night Lights. I loved how it contrasted the glamour associated with the football team with the poverty of the community, the racism that still exists and the socio-economic disparity. I loved the football, the characters and the journey they took.

And in the end, I loved Winchell’s smile.