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# Peter Berg scores big with ‘Friday Night Lights’
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/peter-berg-scores-big-with-friday-night-lights/
- Published: 2004-10-08T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T05:16:22.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: Sports, Santa Monica, #archive-import

Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author Buzz Bissinger’s riveting account of a season spent in a West Texas town obsessed with its high school football team, “Friday Night Lights,” adapted for the big screen by director Peter Berg (“The Rundown,” “Very Bad Things”), is one of the most entertaining sports films ever made.

Everything about the movie is intensely real, from the action out on the blood-stained gridiron to the battles being fought inside the minds and hearts of the coaches, players and fans of the Permian High School Panthers of Odessa, Tex. — one of the nation’s most storied and winning programs. The game sequences, which account for nearly a third of the movie’s running time, are eye-popping spectacles shot by veteran NFL Films’ camera man Thom Owens under the direction of Hollywood’s preeminent pigskin choreographer, Allan Graf. Watching a team of gutsy kids perform such a violent ballet to the full-throated delight of huge crowds, it’s impossible not to get caught up in the hysteria that is football in Texas.

Billy Bob Thornton delivers an appropriately measured performance as no-nonsense coach Gary Gaines, upon whose shoulders rest the championship hopes of an entire region. Gaines is charged with guiding a team that includes an insecure quarterback (Lucas Black), a tailback (Garrett Hedlund) constantly at odds with his overbearing, alcoholic father (country crooner Tim McGraw making a stellar acting debut), and a preening star rusher (Derek Luke) whose season — and pro aspirations — disappear with a snap of a ligament. As the team stumbles along the path to glory and the pressure intensifies, imperfections that were hidden behind the façade of invincibility are exposed, and the psychological toll of the “winning is everything” mantra is brought into clear focus. Gaines and his wife discuss, only half-jokingly, relocating to Alaska should the team fail to win a state championship. Luke’s Boobie Miles defies doctor’s orders and jeopardizes his future by suiting up with a bum wheel. McGraw’s menacing behavior toward his son escalates, and the boy begins to crumble. Knowing that what’s transpiring really happened — and is happening right now in communities all across the country — adds weight to an already robust story. In the end, “Friday Night Lights” succeeds at being both a cautionary tale and an inspiration — and that’s a score we don’t see very often. (Rated PG-13 for thematic issues, sexual content, language, some teen drinking and rough sports action. Running time: 117 minutes)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 8, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/100804.pdf?ref=smdp.com)