Friday Night Lights Critic Reviews

Uplifting and troubling, partly because it is more honest than most sports movies about the high cost and short life span of high school football glory.Read the full review

Berg's picture is certainly an above average effort that provides a solid emotional punch.Read the full review

For all its energy, fine performances and dramatic confrontations, Friday Night Lights substitutes intensity for insight, dodging the book's harsher findings like a dazzling broken-field runner.Read the full review

When Friday Night Lights gets to the big games, the time it's spent creates an atmosphere thick with tension, one akin to the real-world experience of watching a favorite team play for its life.Read the full review

Real enough around the edges to hold our attention even if it sacrifices accuracy for storytelling ease.Read the full review

The film lets you get caught up in the excitement of this religion and the addictive nature of those stadium lights. Berg and cinematographer Tobias Schliessler get up close to the action, catching the hits and miscues in all their violent urgency.Read the full review

Thornton, giving a splendid, disciplined performance, seamlessly shapes his coach into a believable man of quality rather than star-size charisma.Read the full review

Honest because it gets a paradoxical truth: There's more to life than football, even when there isn't.Read the full review

Compelling.Read the full review