Grade: A+ | Genre: Drama Summary: Friday Night Lights is the real deal. This movie is to high school football what Hoosiers was to high school basketball. You'd get no argument from me if you called it the best football movie ever made. It's that good.

Starring: Derek Luke, Billy Bob Thornton, Tim McGraw, Connie Britton, Lucas Black and Jay Hernandez
Director: Peter Berg

This film is loosely based on a true story by H.G. Bissinger about the 1988 Permian Panters of Odessa, Texas. Odessa is a tiny town that lives and dies by high school football. Their church is the stadium and Friday night is when they worship. All the conversation in the town revolves around strategizing the next game and everyone's focus is set on a relentless obsession to win the state championship by any means necessary. Permian has built a tradition of winning that is echoed through ghosts of championships past that haunt the town.

Billy Bob Thornton plays Coach Gaines who is in the unenviable position of head coach of Permian. He constantly teeters between being Odessa's messiah and being drawn and quartered depending on the results of last Friday night's game and how it affects their chances at state. Thornton is quite good as he tip toes on eggshells around the influential members of the community then flips the switch to morph into drill sergeant the following second as practice starts.

All hopes rest on running back phenom Boobie Miles (no laughing in the peanut gallery) played by Derek Luke. He is the specimen of a perfect football player and Luke plays him as boisterous, cocky and upbeat. He can juke defenses out of their shoes. He can plow through defenders as if they were pesky kindergarteners clinging to his legs. Shoot he can even pitch the ball 50 yards for the winning touchdown when necessary. Boobie can do no wrong and he believes all of his good press. As soon as he makes the ominous statement to a teammate, "This is God given. I don't need to workout." It's a telegraphed pass that you know something bad is lurking just around the corner.

The end of the first game wraps with Permian dispatching their competition and Boobie going down with an injured knee. We aren't told the extent of the injury at first or how this is going to affect Permian's season. After Permian gets slaughtered in their following effort and things start to look dire trailing 14-0 in their third outing, a spark catches. Suddenly a breath of life flows into the team as they begin to work together and start to believe they are more than their star player. Slowly they start stringing together a series of wins that puts them into playoff contention. It goes without saying there is a final game complete with high tension and one of the best half time speeches I've ever seen. Of course, I can't tell you how it ends but everything wraps very appropriately. The ending was one of my favorite parts of the film.

The internal struggle of the players was handled perfectly. On the exterior, we see these tough as nails football players yet each one of them is human. They have fears, they get emotional when they lose a hard fought game and they fall apart when their dreams die. They are all fighting to play their way out of the sinkhole that is Odessa. Their father's have championship rings and talk incessantly of past glories as they work subsistence jobs just keeping them above the poverty line. These boys can see themselves twenty years ahead in every face they encounter and winning is the only key they have to open a different destiny. The pressures that all of them play under is staggering to think about.

The other great element of the film was this look at the town. I've alluded to this throughout but it's really a very sad place. Odessa is plagued by poor economic conditions and racial inequality. The irony that their savior resides in a talented black athlete is never lost here. The town exists for high school football. On game night, all of the stores seal up with signs posted, "gone to the game." When they are playing away, everyone caravans together. The Monday morning quarterbacks weasel out of the woodwork at the close of each game to litter talk radio.

Out of a cast of stellar performances, I have to draw attention to Tim McGraw's work here. He plays a drunk, abusive father to one of the players. His character is one of the vilest people I have run across and I kept wishing the son would ram him through a wall. Unfortunately he never does and you can see his heart break every time he can't get his father's love and approval. We get a brief glimpse into the father's heart and see that in his own [beeped] up way he's pushing his son so that he doesn't end up becoming the man he has, filled with a life of disappointments. McGraw please give up that tired country music that is an anchor around your neck and let this role nurture your true talent.

So if it wasn't evident already, I loved this film. This is one of those movies I could watch a hundred times and never tire of. It is the new gold standard for football films heavy on tension and thick with emotion. If you are a football fan, this film needs to have a place in your collection. It is the perfect thing to nurse you until Fall when the pigskin starts flying again.

Buy or rent Friday Night Lights now.