Friday Night Lights

Herald rating: ****

Football is about the only thing that happens in Odessa, Texas. Perhaps that's why the team, the Permian Panthers, is so good. They're regular state champions. Odessa worships them - or did in 1988, when H. G. Bissinger came to town to record the season for a book.

It would turn out to be one of the Panthers' more memorable years, full of the stuff that happens in sporting movies. But this really happened.

The movie-maker is Peter Berg, Bissinger's first cousin, who makes a marvellous fist of the story, from locker room - coach Billy Bob Thornton in manic form - to stadium, and the big game.

But what takes this further than previous sporting movies is what happens off the field: the town's obsession, its effects on the young men, the coming-of-age rites, parental dreams lived through children, life after sport.

The reflection is deepened through the DVD. Extras such as The Story of the 1988 Permian Panthers backgrounds the story and offers a view of the real characters, then and now. Player Cam shows the actors pretending to play football (remember, US youngsters don't play sport in the way that any Kiwi kid can be in the 12th XV).

It's interesting to see the large number of deleted scenes that touch on racial matters, an important sub-text in the movie.

Tim McGraw, the country singer who makes an excellent acting debut as the star player's domineering, drunken dad, talks about his role in Off the Stage, while Bissinger and Berg provide different perspectives on the commentary track.

* DVD, video rental out now