At two hours, "Friday Night Lights" should feel overly long and dragged out. It's not. Whether or not this is one of the greatest sports stories ever told is debatable (these people are simply nuts). Not debatable is whether or not this is a sports movie that will go down as a classic. It will, and it deserves that honor. Thankfully, that has little to do with football, and everything to do with the well-crafted characters. (***** out of *****)
Universal has provided the service of keeping the film digitally preserved in a fantastic fashion. This is the type of transfer that makes you wonder why High Definition DVD is coming down the pipe so soon. Barring some minor grain (which could be intentional) during a few of the darker scenes, this is a perfect picture. The clarity is nothing short of remarkable. Compression artifacts are nowhere to be seen at any point in the film while the black levels create some great contrast throughout. (*****)
Disappointing is the rather mundane and lifeless audio track. While each of those ridiculous hits is really felt via the LFE channel, the immersion level is, sadly, quite low. You never get that "in the stadium" feel like you should. On the lower end, a few of the conversations can be difficult to hear, spoken at level that's well below what can be considered whispering. Sports movies should sound far better in 5.1 than this. (***)
Not a packed special edition, this single disc DVD does house some nice features along with a few that seem rather pointless. Oddly, a commentary track from the director and the books author is included, but it's not listed on the DVD case itself. Instead, they have chosen to show off the "action-packed deleted scenes." Even stranger, there's little to no action included in them. There are a few scenes that probably could have worked including some of the racial tension built around the state final. These scenes must be watched all together, there's no picking and choosing.
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