#billybobthornton

You could put the effort required to get to know a professional football team, its players, coaches, and rivals... or get the whole package in a lean 118 minutes by watching Friday Night Lights. It's undoubtedly the best football movie I've ever seen and among the top sports films.

Set in 1988, the Permia High School Panthers are an ordinary team in an atypical town. Odessa lives and breathes football. Everyone goes to the game and it’s the only thing happening Friday night. Tremendous weight is placed on the young players' shoulders as the new season begins.

The sport in this film sucked me in like no other season - real or fictional - ever has. The games are like action sequences packed with a wide spectrum of emotions. There’s fear when the Panthers are running behind on points. There’s hope as they put together their strategies. There’s drama when a play goes wrong and they face the repercussions off the field. You even get the same kind of excitement contained in bone-crunching martial arts sequences when the players tackle, run, and throw. The stunts in this movie are incredible and they’re all the more impactful because you care about who's on the field.

The games will have your knuckles so tight they turn white but they wouldn't exist without the players. You don’t follow everyone on the team but it doesn't matter. Those you see are the ones you'd choose to. In turn, they contribute to the film's main character: the Panthers team. These children - they're not even out of high school - live in a town where losing a game is as bad as being convicted of a crime. If there’s tension between you and your father, it gets worse when you fumble the ball. If you couldn’t get people to like you when you were just an ok player, forget about making new friends when you just cost your team the game. When they hear “This is going to be the best year of your life, it’s all downhill from now” it gets you thinking not only about their mental state but about the town and the country as a whole. Are we all taking a game too seriously?

As the story explores the pressures put on the Panthers, you're filled with outrage. It makes you want to see them win as bad as everyone else but for different reasons. This town breaks your heart. This atmosphere is poisonous. These 17-year-old's whole lives are football and they’re not even getting paid for it. It carefully manages to both celebrate the sport and condemn those who put too much emphasis on it. You go back-and-forth between wanting to get up and cheer or sit down quietly and reflect upon the emotions on display.

Friday Night Lights contains drama that pulls you to both edges of the emotional spectrum. The performances are solid, the characters complex, and captivating. The games are better shot than any real event could ever be, which makes it exciting on a whole other level. The players, their relationship with the sport, and the town who worship it makes it feels more down-to-earth and unpredictable than if the typical drama you see in sports films were piled on top. It really feels like watching an entire season of the sport within the span of a single movie. It filled me with the kinds of emotion I'm not used to feeling in a sport and I can’t recommend it enough. (Full-screen version on DVD, March 31, 2015)

I don’t know who won the Oscar for “Best Actor” in at the 69th Academy Awards, but it must have been one of the greatest performances of all time to steal it from Billy Bob Thornton. He's so good in Sling Blade it's worth recommending just for him. It's a touching, emotional, thought-provoking, and incredibly well-crafted film.

Karl Childers (Thornton) is an intellectually disabled man just released from the psychiatric hospital where he's resided since the age of twelve. Unsure where to go, he returns to his home town and makes a humble life for himself there repairing engines. He befriends 12-year-old Frank (Lucas Black), a boy whose childhood seems to be going in the same tragic direction as Karl's.

Sling Blade features a disabled character as fully realized as any person you've seen on-screen. After the film is done, you have such an understanding of him you reckon you'd be able to pick out exactly what food he'd keep in his refrigerator on a Saturday morning. You completely understand the ins and outs of his friendship with Frank. They relate in a unique manner. Karl is an adult. He sees the world differently than the young man because of his experience but is able to understand him as no "normal" adult could. Karl's growth has been stunted at the age of 12 because of his institutionalization and his disability. Based on their lives' similarities, it's like they were destined to meet and it's a fascinating thing to watch.

That friendship is the film's core and the way it touches you raises the stakes as much as any plot counting down to the annihilation of the entire planet. Throughout, you sense that something is going to go wrong. Is it because you’ve been programmed to believe nothing good can last forever? Maybe. It could also be that there is something inherently tragic about Karl. He’s in a world that is ill-equipped to handle him. It isn't even that he's mistreated; it’s that nobody really knows what to do with him except for a boy who is on a tragic path himself. It becomes a question of who, if anyone is going to make it out alright.

Written and director by Thornton and based on his play, Sling Blade unleashes a stampede of emotions. Karl and Frank fill you with hope. Despite the danger looming in their future, they are innocents. They have some funny moments, their interactions make you think of your own children/parents. The film's villain, Doyle (Dwight Yoakam). He's dating Frank's mother, Linda (Natalie Canerday), and will make you want to tear your ears off in a rage. If only he was a cartoon you'd be able to distance yourself from him, you'd be immune to the aura of hatred which he exudes. Dwight Yoakam delivers such a powerful, and hateful performance that fills you with despair. You know there are people exactly like him out there. You want Linda and Frank to escape him so badly you'll die if they don't but who's she going to run into the sunset with? Karl? her gay best friend Vaughan (John Ritter, also terrific)? That's a fantasy. This is real. What you feel was already there, deep inside you. We know life contains both the jubilation of being given a new chance and actions that remind you of how awful human beings can sometimes be.

Down to the last moment, Sling Blade is just about perfect because it doesn't chicken out. You don't get the ending you were hoping for, you get the one you deserve and yes, it hurts. Like an assassin that’s been training for years in some hidden temple, it strikes you square in the heart. Sling Blade is a great film. The second it's over, you want to him "Play" right away and watch it again. (On Blu-ray, April 15, 2015)