• Genre: Drama
• MPAA Rating: PG13
• AMG Rating:
• Regional Coding:
  Unspecified

H.G. Bissinger's best-selling true-life account of a few months in the life of a high-school football team comes to the screen in this adaptation written and directed by Peter Berg. Odessa, TX, is an oil town in the western part of the state that's home to the Permian High School Panthers, the football team with the best winning record in the state. Odessa is a town with more than its share of problems; the decline of the oil business in Texas has set the city's economy into a tailspin, and racial tensions still erupt into violence on occasion. But football is the one thing that brings all the people of Odessa together, and on Friday nights every fall, as many as 20,000 people fill Permian's football stadium to watch Coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) and his boys try to lead the team to victory. As Gaines works to build a winning team in a town where victory is prized above all else, however, his players struggle through the emotional trials common to any teenager and ponder the fact that there is little future in their hometown...and that a championship season can be as much a burden as a triumph. Friday Night Lights also stars Lucas Black, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez, and country singer-turned-actor Tim McGraw. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Bonus Features

• cc Action-packed deleted scenes
• Peter Berg Discusses a Scene in the Movie
• Play Cam: Experience firsthand all the action that ensues when 40 actors/athletes live and work together for six wild weeks
• Tim McGraw: Off the Stage - the country music star's transition to the silver screen
• Feature commentary: with director Peter Bergand writer Buzz Bissinger
• The Story of the 1988 Permian Panthers: Witness the real Friday Night Lights players and fans through the eyes of the cast and crew
• Gridiron Grads
• Behind the Lights

Actors

Billy Bob Thornton, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez, Lucas Black, Garrett Hedlund, Tim McGraw, Connie Britton, Lee Thompson Young, Lee Jackson, Grover Coulson

Director

Peter Berg

Producer

Brian Grazer

Mild Violence, Adult Situations, Adult Language, Sexual Situations, Watch With Your Teen, Youth Substance Use

• Sound :
• Language : Eng/Fre/Spa
• Subtitles : Fre/Spa

• Screen : WSE
• Dar : 2.35:1

Review

Friday Night Lights was billed as a "different kind of sports movie," but the film's greatest departure from brethren like Remember the Titans and Varsity Blues is stylistic, not substantive. Peter Berg's herky-jerky camera might bring in more indie-minded viewers than your typical football movie, but it adds little extra legitimacy to the standard components: the obsessive heartland town, the caustic parental pressure, the vein-popping coach, the long-odds push toward the big game. Since it's based on a true story, one can't blame any screenwriter (in this case, Berg) for concocting a bunch of "movie moments" -- only for choosing it as a story that needed telling. Even if it's not that much "different," Friday Night Lights does do a lot of things right. One of these is its handling of the requisite injured athlete facing an unknown future. Since revealing the character would constitute a spoiler, suffice it to say that the actor gives a performance of great burning frustration, drawing sympathy from the audience in a way that the character's previous swagger did not. But the film's most impressive performance goes to country singer and novice actor Tim McGraw, whose turn as a disappointed father is so intense, it leaves blood on the celluloid. These performances contribute to an overall detailed authenticity that's a credit to Berg, who has matured a lot since his previous two features, a popcorn action movie (The Rundown) and a mean-spirited black comedy (Very Bad Things). Maybe Berg is really what sets Friday Night Lights apart. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

• Release Date : July 11, 2006
• Length : 118 Minutes
• Dvdsides : 1
• Dvddiscs : 1
• Upc : 025193002020