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Friday Night Lights

2004

Peter Berg

Billy Bob Thornton, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez, Lucas Black ...

6.4

3,033

Drama Based on the book by H.G. Bissinger, "Friday Night Lights" chronicles the entire 1988 season of the Permian High Panthers of Odessa, Texas, with football players, coaches, mothers, fathers, pastors, boosters, fans and families struggling with ongoing personal conflicts while the team fights for a state championship. A town for sale, Odessa, Texas has seen better days -- the financial bust evident in its boarded-up shops and broken ... [+]

	Author	Review
United Kingdom	Ian Nathan Empire	"The best sports movie for years, as it's not about sport at all (...) An un-American all-American tale that deserves attention (...) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"Thornton gets inside the coach's skin. It's a subtle, soulful performance in a movie that otherwise goes for the jugular (...) Berg takes you so deep into the action, you can hear the bones crunch (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Todd McCarthy Variety	"It’s often hard to tell the characters apart due to all the gear they’re wearing, the script doesn’t go deeply into their lives"	NEG
United States	Sean Daly The Washington Post	"[Berg] smoothly unveils the Panthers' season like a fever dream (...) It's definitely what the obsessed football fans of Odessa deserved."	POS
United States	A. O. Scott The New York Times	"'Friday Night Lights' is a run-of-the-mill sports movie distinguished by a gritty, realistic sense of place (...) Uplifting and troubling"	POS
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"Gaines is played by Billy Bob Thornton in another great performance (...) There's enormous tension and excitement at the end (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS

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