Walking Taco

It’s rare that audiences get treated to good horror movies.  Luckily, a filmmaker or two comes around to deliver one.  Off the top of my head only a few flicks of the last year even come to mind.  “Drag Me to Hell” was a return to form for Sam Raimi fans, and while it’s arguably a straight-up comedy, “Zombieland” was a solid dose of fun.  “The Crazies” hits screens as a remake of a George A. Romero film from 1973 that most (including me) haven’t seen.  So taken on its own terms, this 2010 film works adequately at what it’s setting out to do.

The film opens during a little league baseball game.  A rigid old man, formerly the town drunk, walks onto the field with a rifle in hand. Timothy Olyphant, the bland star of “Live Free or Die Hard” and “Hitman,” and the bright spot of “A Perfect Getaway” and “The Girl Next Door,” plays small-town officer David Dutton.  He confronts the man only to find himself staring down the barrel of the gun before having to make a split-second decision.  He discharges his sidearm and takes the old man’s life.  From here on out, the town becomes stricken with multiple obscure cases involving individuals going mad and attempting/committing murder.  Dutton and his trusted deputy soon discover something has gone terribly wrong with the town’s water supply, turning its inhabitants into vicious killers before becoming zombie-like monsters.  Eventually the whole area becomes quarantined by the U.S. army, and Dutton must fight to protect his wife and unborn child.

Of the many recent zombie films, “The Crazies” fits right in.  I know many horror buffs claim that this isn’t exactly a “zombie” film because the infected people have some form of human consciousness–but come on, they get an infection, start attacking people, and turn into the perfect visual aid of a zombie.  So if I continue to refer to them as such you’ll just have to deal with it.  While I wouldn’t say this movie ranks quite as high as “28 Weeks Later” or the 2004 “Dawn of the Dead,” it’s a close call.  Director Breck Eisner (of the forgettable 2005 “Sahara’) knows how to instill some raging intensity in a scene. Granted, most of the sequences here have a certain familiarity and standardization to them especially within the genre, but he isn’t simply selling truckloads of gore. Sure, there is some of that, but he never forgets that the horror rests not ultimately with the zombies, but with human versus human confrontation.  The most interesting aspect of “The Crazies” is the fact that there is some form of humanity left in these monsters.  They have thoughts and memories, but with a damaged mind–driven to murder.  M. Night Shyamalan should have waited and taken notes from this film when developing the atrocious “The Happening.”  “The Crazies” also features a few memorable scenes, making it more than disposable horror, and ones concerning ‘the living dead.’  The tone of the movie never falters, and it also never loses sight of moral questions and dilemmas, providing the right commentary to give reason for the movie.  It’s still not a spectacular movie, or the horror film to reinvent the genre, but with solid performances across the board, excellent cinematography and unnerving tension the whole way through, “The Crazies” makes a standard zombie affair quite entertaining.

Grade: B-

-MJV & the Movies

Horror Breck Eisner, Radha Mitchell, Timothy Olyphant

I saw War Games years ago when I was about six or seven years old, and my perception the world pretty much extended to the end of the hallway at Pershing Elementary School.  I knew about the Russians, but did not understand the Cold War.  I knew about “duck and cover” drills, but we never had them at my school.  I also knew about video games, but out little Mac 512K-E was mostly limited to snake and shufflepuck.  So when, as a kid, I watched 16-year-old computer David Lightman (Matthew Broderick, in his  pre-Ferris days) play a computer game of tic-tac-toe to save the world from nuclear annihilation…I was really confused.

I recently figured it was high time to give John Badham’s suspenseful cold war film another shot.  And while the film doesn’t have the same social impact it once might have, it does remain an interesting look at a rather singular time in our history when the threat of nuclear war was not only real but, in the minds of many people, imminent.  Lightman is a lovable slacker who smarts off to his teachers at school and spends his evenings and weekends at video arcades and hacking into computer systems with his monochromatic PC at home.  And while this character could have been played by just about any teenage actor, it’s Matthew Broderick’s wide-eyed innocent charm that really sell the role.  He’s on relatively good terms with his parents, he has an entirely innocent friendship with his classmate Jennifer (Ally Sheedy), and his hacking is mostly good-natured fun.  He’s not out to ruin anyone’s day, it’s just that school bores him because he’s too smart for the system–and he knows it.

David Lightman: saving the world, getting the girl, and making it home in time for dinner.

When Lightman sees an ad for a new computer game, he tries to hack in to the company’s systems so he can play their game before it’s released to the public.  Soon enough he comes across a computer system with a list of games like “Chess,” “Tic Tac Toe,” and “Global Thermonuclear War.”  Thinking he has found a repository of top-secret computer games, he and Jennifer decide to try out the last game, pretend they are the Russians, and launch a volley of missiles at the United Stated.  All good fun, right?  Well, it would be except for one little detail:  Lightman didn’t know it, but he had really found his way into a top-secret NORAD computer mainframe and had just flipped the switch on World War III.

Pretty soon all heck breaks loose.  Baby Matthew Broderick is busted by the government and taken to the NORAD underground Top Secret Lair where military dudes with Texas accents and cigars the size of drain pipes are blathering about doomsday, barking out DEFCON status updates, and glowering at Lightman very sternly while telling him in no uncertain terms to stay put.  Sure enough he breaks the heck out of there, gets his friend-girl to buy him a plane ticket home, and the two of them track down Dr. Stephen Falken, the creator of the WOPR military computer that is about to blow up the world, because he is the only one who can stop the madness.  In the end, the fate of all civilization comes down to a gigantic game of Tic-Tac-Toe and the hope that if a machine can learn how futile nuclear war is, maybe we humans can too.  Aww.

Don't laugh, folks. This used to be cutting-edge computer graphics.

Things are perhaps more than a tad predictable in War Games, but it’s a suspenseful movie with just enough coming-of-age moments for Lightman to keep us cheering for him.  It’s a classic geek story with a likable, nerdy hero who gets the girl in the end, and despite some over-the-top performances here and there (not to mention the very idea of putting nuclear launch capabilities solely in the hands of a computer…*ahem*  I’m looking at you, James Cameron), War Games is an enjoyable film whose message still holds up today, even if our cultural zeitgeist is more focused on terrorism than nuclear war.  And it might not be long until the two become one and the same, so perhaps the message is in fact just as relevant now as it ever was…

Rating:

Action Matthew Broderick, War Games

When I was a kid I used to watch Batman: The Animated Series after school while rolling up newspapers for my daily delivery route.  I wouldn’t say I was a hardcore fan of the show, but I did appreciate its mature subject matter and often heavyhanded treatment of moral and ethical issues.  Animated, yes, but far from a simple cartoon: it was an animated show that explored justice, morality, the dual nature of humanity and our need to create masks to hide our true nature.  Along with Batman were shows like Gargoyles and X-Men that treated their audiences with a greater level of respect, and assumed a greater level of maturity, than typical after school animated entertainment.  Sadly, I never got in to those two the same way I did with Batman.  In fact, as deep as the Batman mythology goes, one could argue that the X-Men mythos is far richer and replete with many more metaphors and messages that are as relevant to our society now as they ever were.  And it is this rich source material that director Bryan Singer, the mastermind behind the outstanding Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil, draws on for his big-screen adaptation of X-Men.  For the most part, Singer succeeds in crafting a tight and engaging story that, despite the laundry list of characters and conflicts, manages to be not only entertaining but smart and full of delicious subtexts and metaphors for modern social conflicts.  Even though the special effects sometimes get out of hand, and the movie sometimes takes itself a bit too seriously for its own good, X-Men is an enjoyable film for those who like their buckets of popcorn large and buttery as well as those who prefer to spend evenings philosophizing at coffee shops.

Cyclops, the X-Men frat dude, about to unleash some optical fury up in this grill.

Because I spent my afternoons while growing up watching the Caped Crusader instead of legions of mutants, I know virtually nothing about the history and mythology of the X-Men.  I have never read an X-Men comic book, only rarely seen episodes of the animated series, and am for all intents and purposes an X-Men newbie.  A movie like this is almost sure to get the fanboys out to the theatres (though beware the backlash lest the movie fail to live up to impossible expectations!), but to please (appease?) them and also appeal to people like me is a tricky proposition.

The story wisely focuses largely on Wolverine, one of the more complex characters in the X-Men universe, and to a smaller degree Rogue, a young girl with the (often unfortunate) ability to take powers from other people or mutants simply through physical contact.  Wolverine’s mutant ability to heal himself, combined with his ability to extend metal claws from his knuckles, is a far cry from Storm’s ability to alter the weather, Mystique’s talent for shape-shifting, or Cyclops’ powerful laser eyesight, and it is this ability that allows casual viewers like myself to connect with the main character on a personal level.  The same goes for Rogue:  we see her accidentally send a young man into a coma when the two of them share their first kiss, and this helps us not only understand the depth of her character but connect with her on an emotional level as well.  She runs away to Canada after this incident, meets up with Wolverine in a seedy bar, and begins to form a friendship that serves to define their characters throughout the rest of the movie.

The relationship between Xavier and Magneto is wonderfully deep and complex--a far cry from Good Guy vs. Bad Guy.

Ultimately this is why Bryan Singer’s X-Men succeeds where it could have just as easily failed:  Singer focuses first and foremost on the characters, using special effects and big-budget action setpieces when necessary to the story as opposed to the other way around.  And perhaps the most interesting of all is the relationship between bad guy Magneto (Ian McKellan) and good guy and X-Men savior Professor Xavier (Patrick Steward, fantastic as usual).  Singer eschews the traditional insane-megalomaniac-bent-on-world-domination caricature in favor of a Magneto who, because of his childhood experiences in Nazi concentration camps, sees only the worst of what humans are capable of doing–especially to those who, like mutants, are different.  When Senator Kelly (Bruce Davidson) introduces a bill effectively forcing all mutants to declare themselves, and their powers, to the authorities, Magneto puts in place his plan that will essentially turn all the world leaders into mutants.  Xavier, with his team of mutant good guys, must put a stop to this dastardly deed before it’s too late and the human/mutant conflict escalates into a war.

It’s a premise that can only exist in a comic book movie, to be sure, but in the capable hands of Singer the movie never devolves into comixploitation or cartooney violence just for the sake of it.  In fact, the story actually focuses too much on the characters–there are so many humans, good mutants, and bad (or just misguided) mutants to keep track of that the movie gets a little too convoluted for its own good.  Between love-triangle jealousy, character backstories, political wrangling, treachery and deceit, and Ray Park’s stuntman acrobatics, it’s a heck of a lot to process in just two hours.  And the climactic battle on the Statue of Liberty is actually a bit of a letdown–it would have been great to see an all-out brawl between Magneto and some of the X-Men, rather than having most of them sit around, helplessly locked up until Cyclops accidentally saves the day.  The script is also a bit too heavy for its own good, with some of the cheesiest dialog this side of Episode 2.  After all, this is a comic book movie, not Shawshank Redemption, so maybe Singer could have eased up on the seriousness level a few times.

Rating:

Action Bryan Singer, comic books, X-Men

Let me get this out of the way right off the bat:  Second Skin is outstanding.  It is a documentary that does what it should:  document.  There’s very little in the way of agenda or self-aggrandizing.  There’s no narrator, no artificial plot or conflict created by the director, and some loose ends are purposely left hanging and questions left unanswered.  What we have, then, is a thoroughly compelling, entirely engrossing exploration of online games and the people who play them.  Director Juan Carlos Pineiro-Escoriaza follows several individuals from a variety of walks of life who all happen to play some form of online role-playing game such as EverQuest or World of Warcraft.  Through the course of the film we see how these online games affect the lives of the individuals–for better or for worse–and also hear thoughts and insights about online games from game developers and other industry insiders.  And while online gaming might seen like a strange subject for a documentary, it’s the way in which these games affect the subjects of the film that transforms the film from a mere curiosity to a must-see for anyone who either plays online games or know someone who plays them.  And there’s a lot more than you might think.

The individuals that Pineiro-Escoriaza uses as the subject of his documentary are fairly normal people:  they have jobs, significant others, and social lives.  But the one thread they all share is their love of online gaming.  And I don’t mean love, like one might say “I love cookies.”  These people game (yes, it is a verb) for six, eight, even twelve or more hours a day.  Online gaming has, in many cases, supplanted reality as the preferred method of social interaction for these individuals–and in some cases for very good reasons.  As is pointed out through interviews with the gamers as well as developers and academics, online games and their social communities can be a place where looks, cultural background, talent, and past failures are entirely erased.  In essence, the first time anyone logs on to World of Warcraft or any one of the hundreds of online games available, he or she is free to create a dopplegänger that can literally be anyone he or she wants it to be.  In a world where people are so often judged by looks, clothes, social status, and myriad other factors that belie the true character of the individual, online games offer a refuge in which people are free to live out alternate lives free of the prejudices and trappings of reality.  And within the massive constructs offered by these worlds, people are free to pursue goals, gain new skills, meet friends, even join secret societies and elite clubs like The Syndicate.  A compelling alternate-reality existence indeed.

Kevin Keel, an online gamer who found what he hopes is true love through EverQuest II.

Careful to not gloss over the complications of living this type of life, Pineiro-Escoriaza shows the good and bad sides of how this passion (some would call addiction) affects the subjects of his film.  Andy Belford is a man who moves to Indiana to live with three other men he met online, and the four of them form a friendship that is deep and fulfilling both in real life and online.  Kevin Keel moves from Texas to Florida to be with Heather Cowan, a woman he met on EverQuest.  And Andrew Monkelban, an individual severely crippled by cerebral palsy, is able to life a fulfilling virtual life within the confines of his computer screen, meeting people, forming relationships, and enjoying simple activities like walking in a park that are beyond his reach in reality.  Liz Wooley, a woman whose son committed suicide after becoming so engrossed in World of Warcraft that he lost touch with reality and took his own life, is now committed to helping gamers with their online addictions and even provides a safe house and a 12-step program.  But with all the positive ways in which online games affect the individuals of the documentary, there are plenty of downsides too.  Keel and Cowan have incredible difficulty relating to each at times, and are forced to deal with the many struggles inherent in merging lives in the real world.  Belford and his friends drift apart after marriages and children begin to take over, and encounter an entirely new set of difficulties when they try to balance their love of (addiction to?) online games with newfound responsibilities in real life.  And Dan Bustard, a healthy and prosperous man in real life, becomes so entrenched in playing World of Warcraft that he loses his friends, job, girlfriend, and even thinks of taking his own life.

Faced with the birth of twins, Andy Belford is forced to balance real-world responsibilities and maintaining a Level 70 WoW character.

Interspersed throughout the stories told in Second Skin are a number of interviews with couples who have found each other online, brief investigations into the shady practice of Gold Farming, history lessons on online gaming, as well as the aforementioned interviews and comments from actual game developers (though, curiously, none of the individuals behind WoW, EverQuest, or any of the other online games which are the subject of the film).  In fact, more than most documentaries I have seen, Second Skin succeeds because it accomplishes the goal of the medium:  it documents.  And while there is always more to the story than what is shown onscreen, it doesn’t really push one particular viewpoint over another.  Is online gaming good or healthy for people?  How much online gaming is too much?  Is is normal for people to take sick days off work just to play a World of Warcraft expansion pack?  Such questions are raised but not answered, and instead left for the viewers to decide.  And while the film does leave some loose ends, it does offer as much conclusion as possible on some of the storylines.  But beyond the basic interviewing and reporting, Second Skin is a thoroughly engrossing and often entertaining look at a subset of a subset of our culture that is actually a lot bigger than most people realize.

Perhaps most interesting of all, though, is Bustard, who eventually kicks his gaming habit not through the help of Wooley and her program, but through sheer will and determination.  In the end he regains his health, trims his waistline, and decides that even a solitary walk around town on a snowy evening is far better and more satisfying than any excursion in an online gaming.

Rating:

Documentary MMORPG, Online Games, video games

Mel Gibson, long absent from headlining films as an actor, returns with the gritty, generically-titled revenge-thriller “Edge of Darkness.”  The movie pits him as a Boston Police Detective, Tom Craven, investigating the murder of his daughter.  Shortly after picking up his 22-year-old from the airport to stay with him, she is gunned down on the front porch and dies in his arms.  With her death appearing to be a botched attempt on his own life, Craven begins an investigation that will lead him into his daughter’s secret life of political conspiracy, you know… the kind where everything is classified and no one can be trusted, including a shadowy operative ‘fixer’ (Ray Winstone) who follows Tom around and never fully discloses whether he is there to help, or lead Tom into a deadly trap.

Skillfully directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, The Mask of Zorro) from a script adapted by William Monohan (Oscar-winner for The Departed), “Edge of Darkness” is a goofy plot full of holes and question marks with a conspiracy behind it that isn’t as well constructed as it think it is.  Oddly enough, that doesn’t much matter.  Gibson, even after an eight-year absence, is still a presence to be reckoned with, despite having a little less hair and a few more lines in his face.  His credibility remains (forget the personal life garbage), and the man is back.  His restraint in the film makes his mission more intense, and even when everything is resolved and other character motivations and plot advances seem shaky, Gibson remains that solid force that holds this thing together.  The direction of Campbell and the darkness of the script from Monohan also helps immensely.  Let me make this clear… “Edge of Darkness” is not “Taken.” There’s nothing Jason Bourne or cartoonish about the action here.  Campbell’s film is slow-moving, procedural, and much more mystery than shoot-em-up.  That actually helps establish a real-world context, and makes some intense moments all the more surprising and effective.  For those wanting bang-bang and impressive stunt-work, look elsewhere.  That’s not on the agenda, although there is action and big-budget action moments, the movie is all about atmosphere, and not for those with a short attention span.

After all is said and done, “Edge of Darkness” crams a lot of hooey plot devices and questionable conclusions in the way of a gritty thriller, from its lack of the father-daughter relationship being well-established, to its head-scratching conspiracy.  That’s okay.  Gibson, Monohan, and Campbell deliver an exciting film, and I expected no less.  Audiences should be pleased with Gibson’s return–the man is in fine form, and who better to deliver the vengeful goods than our very own mid-50s Martin Riggs?  I’ve never seen a Gibson film I didn’t enjoy, and no I haven’t seen them all, but I’ve seen probably about 2/3 of his line-up.  “Edge of Darkness” adds to the list.  It’s a tough, violent R-rated thriller that plays very well while you watch it.

GRADE: B

Action, Drama, Mystery Martin Campbell, Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, William Monohan

What a complete waste of genuine comic talent.  Tell me, how can a movie go so wrong?  “Couples Retreat” has Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau and Jason Bateman–these talented guys could each carry their own movie to hilarious heights and have found themselves in the same movie.  Through studio intervention, terrible writing, zero jokes, and lazy performances, “Couples Retreat” amounts to an all-star cast getting to shoot a movie on a vacation island and party for a few weeks.

The plot of the movie centers around a couple (Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell) having martial problems and deciding that a dream vacation will heal the wounds and save their marriage.  But they need three sets of friends to drop their lives and head out with them to get the great group-rate package.  So the three couples (Vince Vaughn, Malin Akerman), (Jon Favreau, Kristin Davis), (Faizon Love, Kali Hawk) head off to paradise with the ‘Bateman, Bell” couple for a two-week vacation that turns into… you guessed it… disaster, and the worst kind of disaster–the kind that renders the movie a complete disaster.  Every comic scenario fails… From a lame shark attack, to Faizon’s character having to drop his pants without any underwear on, to an up-close-and-personal yoga instructor who looks like Kevin Sorbo with stubble, to (I kid you not…) a Guitar Hero face-off.  Absolutely nothing works.  Frankly, I’m getting tired of Vaughn turning in these garbage paycheck movies (Fred Claus, Four Christmases) that turn into box-office hits.  He is a very funny guy, but he’s in unfunny movies lately.  “Couples Retreat” has been slapped together and filled with unlikable characters.  These three schlubs have been saddled with gorgeous significant others and can’t seem to make their relationship work, how sad.  And the funny thing is, none of them learn anything.  The movie abruptly ends when the movie is spiraling out of control.  These pivotal shifts in character fail to happen throughout the movie, and then in the last minutes, the filmmakers seem to realize they are running out of time and have the couples reunite and fall back in love with zero foundation as to why.  Just spare yourself–this is one stupid, terrible movie.  If there’s a point of interest in it, it’s the fact that Peter Billingsley (who played Ralphie in “A Christmas Story”) directed this botch-job.

GRADE: D

Comedy Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn

We all gotta start somewhere. Robert Rodriguez, one of the few mainstream directors who could hold his own opposite Quentin Tarantino, began his career with an extremely low-budget film called El Mariachi. He soon followed that with 1995’s Desperado. And while neither film was a cinematic masterpiece (I reviewed the former and latter), they were interesting and somewhat compelling character pieces focusing on a somewhat mysterious wandering mariachi who had a guitar case full of guns and squared off against local drug kingpins.  The third in the Mariachi trilogy, however, is a different story (har!) altogether.

Before I get to the meat of the review, though, take a moment to read the IMDB plot summaries of each.

El Mariachi: A traveling mariachi is mistaken for a murderous criminal and must hide from a gang bent on killing him.

Sounds interesting enough, right?  Simple, effective, and to the point.

Desperado: A gunslinger is embroiled in a war with a local drug runner.

Again, this seems like a decent storyline with room for some good conflicts.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico: Hitman “El Mariachi” becomes involved in international espionage involving a psychotic CIA agent and a corrupt Mexican general.

Wait a second…hitman? International espionage?  psychotic CIA agents and corrupt military officials?  If brevity is the soul of wit, this movie has its work cut out for it.

Antonio Banderas reprises his role as El Mariachi once again. He's ready to bust some heads, but not even he knows why.

I have no problem with thinking big.  In fact, some of my favorite movies are epic in scale.  But big just for the sake of big is usually a recipe for failure.  Unfortunately, like George Lucas cluttering up Star Wars with all sorts of meaningless characters and contrived conflicts in Episode I, Robert Rodriguez took a perfectly good character and transformed his (presumably) final chapter into a mess of politics and poorly-executed government intrigue.  The result is a movie that wanders from character to character, in which the Mariachi himself is almost an afterthought.  Meanwhile, the storyline is so convoluted that it becomes a chore to try and keep up with it all.  “Mexico” is a film that strives for too many things and ultimately succeeds at almost none of them.

With the two previous films there was no doubt about who the central character was: the Mariachi.  In the third film we have a handful of characters to follow:  Agent Sands (Johnny Depp, giving it his level best), the aforementioned “psychotic CIA agent;” Billy (Mickey Rourke), a convicted felon who is trying to right past wrongs; Ajedrez (Eva Mendez), a double-crossing government agent, Barillo (Willem DaFoe), the drug kingpin who is trying to stage a coup and take over the government…and oh yeah, El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas doing an excellent job considering what he has to work with), the mysterious guitar-playing gunslinger who doesn’t actually have much to do with anything.  In fact, it’s as if Rodriguez, who reprised his role as writer and director, constructed a plot about drug kingpins, double agents, government takeovers, and international espionage and then realized he had to find a way to fit his Mariachi character into it somehow.

Mickey Rourke and Willem Dafoe, tackling issues and taking names.

Even the shootouts and gunfights–Rodriguez’ bread and butter, and a hallmark of the Mariachi films–are kind of a mess.  One that takes place inside a cathedral, with the Mariachi defending himself against a small horde of nameless Bad Guys, is stylistically impressive but emotionally empty.  The same can be said for another gunfight in the middle of a crowded street later in the movie, as if Rodriguez knew he had to throw in some violence even though it doesn’t serve much of a purpose for the overall story.  But perhaps the worst transgression of this movie is its treatment of what little there is of the Mariachi character.  The Mariachi from the first two films plays by his own rules, and does what needs to be done.  The Mariachi in Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a government agent who is ostensibly going after the killers of his wife and daughter, but is mostly content to do what he is told by shady operatives.  Worse yet, Rodriguez turns the Mariachi into a parody of himself:  at one point Antonio Banderas literally rides his guitar case like a surfboard down a flight of stairs.  Worse yet, near the end of the film one of the men in his mariachi band pulls out a remote control and literally drives his guitar-case-on-wheels through the streets and underneath a truck, at which point it explodes and kills all the men inside.  I understand Rodriguez’ tongue-in-cheek style, but this is cinematic buffoonery.

There are a few redeeming qualities to be found here, despite the movie’s myriad flaws.  Agent Sands is one of the more interesting characters I have seen onscreen in quite a while, and the plot does have its share of compelling intrigue and backstabbing.  It’s just not very well put together, and doesn’t make for a fitting entry into the Mariachi franchise.

Rating:

Action Antonio Banderas, Johnny Depp, Robert Rodriguez

The faithful reader might remember a piece I posted last fall on Glory Road. Thad H. posted a comment on that piece suggesting that, in light of my go-against-the-flow approach to racial politics, I might enjoy Friday Night Lights, the story of the 1988 Permian “Mojo” Panthers, led by Coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) in their bid for their 6^th State Championship.

If you like high school football you’ll love this movie. It takes place in small-town Texas (Odessa, to be exact), where football is a religion and the high school players are hailed as much as NFL stars. Director Peter Berg serves up plenty of bone-bruising hits, body-bending catches, and tackles that have to involve a trampoline just off camera.

Odessa is a blue collar, nearly impoverished town, and there are two kinds of boys: those who might make it out of this town, and those who won’t. Those who might play their hearts out on the field in hopes of getting an NCAA scholarship. Those who won’t play their hearts out on the field because this is all they’ll ever have.

Beginning of the season.

All this creates an intense environment to grow up in. Gaines is threatened with termination if he doesn’t win State, and after one loss, comes home to find “for sale” signs all over his yard. One of his players, Don Billingsly (Gerrett Hedlund), is cursed to be the son of a local football legend, and not have his ability. For several painful scenes, Chuck Billingsly (Tim McGraw) verbally abuses Don and grinds him down for cut-ups on the field. The Panthers win most of their games, but people flagellate them for every mistake. All of this spills onto the field, of course, and Berg makes the action nasty enough that you wonder if this is a sports movie or the teen version of  Braveheart. If you enjoy watching young men get their noses smashed and fingers broken, this is the movie for you.

FNLdoes keep the audience involved. I kept backing it up to revisit what happened. The pacing is a little off, though. In a couple of close games, for example, Mojo is getting killed for awhile, Gaines yells a lot, and then suddenly they have some big plays, and end up winning or making it close. The film never builds your anticipation or shows what they changed on the field to get that result. A good sports movie would at least have some kind of inspirational speech that turns things around.

But why complain? This is a movie made for sports nuts, and it makes you feel like you’re watching a real game. There was only one thing about this film I really didn’t like. (Spoiler alert: you might want to skip the next paragraph.)

Target audience of "Friday Night Lights."

For the championship game, Mojo goes up against Dallas Carter, a team full of 300-pounders that hardly seem to belong in high school. As a matter of fact, in reality, D.C. was later stripped of its title for playing an ineligible player. (As a side note, D.C. is an all black school. Berg includes a few things that no director would have

End of the season.

dared a few years ago, like a scene of the D.C. coaches playing the race card in an attempt to get black referees, and D.C. receiving an unearned TD from one such ref that changes the outcome of the game.) No one expects Mojo to give D.C. any trouble. After being down as much as 21 points, Mojo comes back to close the gap to six, and then falls inches short of a TD at the last second. We then see a lot of slow motion walking across the field. One person walking is Don Billingsly. Chuck comes out of the stands and gives him a hug – which Don actually accepts! WTF?? Now that he’s fought overwhelming odds, covered himself in bruises and sprained every joint in his body, he’s good enough for acknowledgement from the man who’s treated him like dirt all his life, and he takes it?? I wanted him to push dad aside and congratulate his team, or kiss his girlfriend, or something.

A lot of guys love to talk about how football produces the best kind of men, and this movie was made for them. I tend to think the success of ex-players has less to do with qualities the game instills than the fact that having played for the local high school is a golden ticket into the local country club. It gets a little old having to be twice as good and work twice as hard as the guys that played football. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate and enjoy the drama that comes with sports, however. FNL succeeds at what it sets out to do, and for that I give it

Documentary, Drama, Sports 80s, berg, football, gains, hedlund, hernandez, high school, kids, luke, McGraw, panthers, permian, small town, south, Sports, texas, thornton