Friday Night Lights

Sports movies have an uncanny ability to inspire audiences, or at least they do me. There's just something moving about beating the odds, striving for a goal, enduring the fight, and going a little bit farther and harder than you ever though possible. That said, Friday Night Lights is a good sports movie, but not as much of an inspiring one (though it does have some obligatory and effective moments of achievement). The football scenes are well-staged and effectively realistic. What holds this one together is the understated performance of Billy Bob Thornton as the coach who receives more than his share of pressure and "suggestions" from the townsfolk and players parents, but endures with a quiet grace. The thing though, that makes the best of this genre is when the victory is acheieved before the game is even played (think Chariots of Fire, Rocky, Rudy etc.), and this film fails to reach that note.