Friday Night Lights

Theatrical Release Date: 2004 10 08 (USA)

UPC: 025195055604

Studio: Universal Studios

MPAA Rating: PG13   Contains:[Mild Violence, Adult Situations, Adult Language, Sexual Situations, Watch With Your Teen, Youth Substance Use]

Summary: 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, Rovi

Category: Drama

Awards: Best Picture – American Film Institute

Features: Action-packed deleted scenes
Peter Berg discusses a scene in the movie
Player cam
Tim McGraw: off the stage
The story of the 1988 Permian Panthers
Gridiron grads
Behind the lights
Feature commentary with director Peter Berg and author Buzz Bissinger

Friday Night Lights

Format: Blu-ray

Release Date: 01/06/2009

Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Cinemascope

Audio: DTS Digital Theater Systems, DD2 Dolby Digital Stereo

Runtime: 118 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English,Spanish,French

Subtitles: English,Spanish,French

Derek Armstrong

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, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Angie Bolling  Actor 
Kevin Page  Actor 
Christopher Dahlberg  Actor 
Kasey Stevens  Actor 
Clay Kennedy  Actor 
Rutherford Cravens  Actor 
Turk Pipkin  Actor 
Brady Coleman  Actor 
Christian Kane  Actor 
Paul Wright III  Actor 
Amber Heard  Actor 
B.T. Stone  Actor 
C. Anthony "Charles" Jackson  Actor 
Dan Rankin  Actor 
Aisha Schliessler  Actor 
Bradley Lisman  Actor 
Corey Hargers  Actor 
Jon Luke  Actor 
Travis Thompson  Actor 
Branson Washburn  Actor 
Gary Mack Griffin  Actor 
Bob Richardson  Actor 
Talon Smith  Actor 
Chris Fisher  Actor 
Tyrone Jones  Actor 
Ray Ross  Actor 
Stephen Bishop  Actor 
John Patrick Hayden  Actor 
Julius Tennon  Actor 
Dennis Hill  Actor 
J.D. Hawkins  Actor 
Laine Kelly  Actor 
Rick Herod  Actor 
Cleveland "Chick" Harris  Actor 
Harvey L. Jeffries  Actor 
Brian Thornton  Actor 
Dean Baldwin  Actor 
Deshaun Hill  Actor 
Robert Nguyen  Actor 
Brandon Tully  Actor 
Steven Rogers  Actor 
Tommy G. Kendrick  Actor 
Katherine Willis  Actor 
Evan Bernard  Actor 
Richard Nance  Actor 
Buddy Hale  Actor 
Robert Scott Smith  Actor 
Kammerin Hunt  Actor 
Ty Law  Actor 
Robert Flores  Actor 
Sunny Byrd  Actor 
Nick Jester  Actor 
Everick Rawls  Actor 
Robert Weaver  Actor 
Joseph Norman  Actor 
Kyle-Scott Jackson  Actor 
Mark Nutter  Actor 
Lillian Langford  Actor 
Eloise DeJoria  Actor 
Dr. Carey Windler  Actor 
Connie Cooper  Actor 
Marco Perella  Actor 
Timothy Walter  Actor 
Billy Melvin Thomas  Actor 
Tiki Davis  Actor 
Sam Austin  Actor 
Ben Bronson  Actor 
Ryan Jacobs  Actor 
Dewayne Patmon  Actor 
Darrick Wallace  Actor 
Ryanne Duzich  Actor 
Lewis B. Johnson  Actor 
David Johnson  Actor 
Randy Brinlee  Actor 
Mark Donaldson  Actor 
Taylor Sawyers  Actor 
Cedric Foster  Actor 
Mark Llewellyn  Actor 
Chad L. Stevens  Actor 
Chris Palmer  Actor 
Brad Leland  Actor 
Charles Sanders  Actor 
Gavin Grazer  Actor 
Barry Sykes  Actor 
Kenneth Plunk  Actor 
Roy Williams  Actor 
Peter Harrell Jr.  Actor 
Terry Parks  Actor 
Bobby Doherty  Actor 
Mike Jones  Actor 
Brett Robin  Actor 
Jeff Gibbs  Actor 
Ken Farmer  Actor 
Everett Smith  Actor 
Richard Dillard  Actor 
John Clark  Actor 
Josh Berry  Actor 
Morgan Farris  Actor 
Wade Johnston  Actor 
Kippy Brown  Actor 
Tim Crowley  Actor 
Wayne Hanawalt  Actor 
Aaron Babino  Actor 
Tavis Harvey  Actor 
O.J. McClintock  Actor 
Matt Trissel  Actor 
Barney Welch  Actor 
Peter Berg  Director 
Peter Berg  Screenwriter 
David Aaron Cohen  Screenwriter 
Brian Grazer  Producer 
James Whitaker  Executive Producer 
John Cameron  Executive Producer 
Lee Berger  Executive Producer 
Explosions in the Sky  Composer (Music Score) 
Billy Bob Thornton  Actor 
Derek Luke  Actor 
Jay Hernandez  Actor 
Lucas Black  Actor 
Garrett Hedlund  Actor 
Tim McGraw  Actor 
Connie Britton  Actor 
Lee Thompson Young  Actor 
Lee Jackson  Actor 
Grover Coulson  Actor 

Country: USA