OxfordPress.com

Grade: A-

Verdict: The best football movie since "North Dallas Forty."

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
Cox News Service

In the small West Texas town of Odessa, winning isn't the only thing.

It's everything.

The Permian High School football coach is paid more than the principal. Funding for Ratliff Stadium -- one of the largest high school football facilities in the country -- was considered more important than all other school programs combined. And come late Friday afternoon, the entire town shuts down, with "closed" signs appearing in the windows of everything from law firms to car dealerships.

Based on H.G. Bissinger's 1990 best seller, the excellent new film "Friday Night Lights" captures that community obsession with the Permian Panthers, one of the two local high school teams, without idealizing it.

Or mocking it.

Rather, the film manages to plug into the seasonal "Go Panthers!" charge that gives Odessa a sense of civic pride, its sense of itself as a town, without getting blown up by it.

In less than two hours, director Peter Berg (best known for TV's "Chicago Hope," and also Bissinger's cousin) doesn't have time to go deep, so to speak. "Friday Night Lights" can't possibly capture the layers upon layers of social and economic pressure, and the matters of class and race, explored in the book. What it can do -- and does so well -- is give us reality-check glimpses into the complex tensions and harsh realities that are the subtext of every season, while still delivering a bang-up football movie.

Like the book, Berg's movie takes place in 1988. New coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton, effortlessly conveying the resolution, kindness and stress that comes with the job) must lead the Panthers to another state championship or else pack up his family and move to yet another dusty little town looking for Friday night magic. One lost game and he comes home to a lawn littered with "For Sale" signs.

The team is led by the tremendously gifted Boobie Miles (Derek Luke, making good on his "Antwone Fisher" promise). For Boobie, who lives in a tiny ramshackle house with his devoted uncle (a heartbreaking Grover Coulson), a football scholarship leading to a career in the pros is the only thing standing between him and, basically, riding a garbage truck.

Quarterback Mike Winchell (Lucas Black), whose ill mother drills him on the playbook every morning over breakfast, is full of self-doubt. The constant pressure is like a repeated kick to the gut. When another player suggests Mike lighten up -- after all, they're only 17 -- he replies, "I don't feel 17."

Still, Mike's on easy street compared to fumble-prone tailback Don Billingsley (Garrett Hedlund). His abusive, psycho dad (country superstar Tim McGraw in a riveting major-feature debut) tapes Don's hands to a football in a drunken rage and screams things during practice like, "You're embarrassing me."

Rejecting the gooey Hollywood hokum of the well-intentioned but limited "Remember the Titans," Berg creates a documentary feel -- with hand-held camera and feverish editing -- that makes the picture as gritty as it is intoxicating.

Cinematographer Tobias Schliessler's restless camera flits from the exhausted little blonde who plays the team mascot to a daring handoff to Thornton's clenched teeth and flashing eyes.

However, even as Berg spins us in a dizzying whirl of football fever, his movie slows down to give crucial emotional moments breathing room. Such as a player's shattered face when he's given the forget-your-future news of a torn ligament. Or a father-son confrontation over a tossed-away championship ring.

If you're not a football fan, you'll be surprised -- and thrilled -- by how completely this film engages you. And diehard fans may be surprised at how well it conveys the electricity, the elation, even the grief of the game. Vince Lombardi once said that knowing "we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand" was what mattered -- a sentiment expressed in a strong locker-room speech given by Thornton.

Ultimately, "Friday Night Lights" isn't about winning or losing or even how you play the game. It's about why some things -- even things as ordinary as a football game -- matter.