Under the Stadium Lights

Don't waste your time. The story was worth about 15 minutes of footage. It was like the Director went to the cutting room floor and added an hour and a half of footage just so they could call it a movie instead of a trailer. That footage should have stayed on the cutting room floor.

Ok, so let me start off by saying that I live in Abilene Tx where this was shot. I went to the same High School and I remember this football season. I enjoyed watching the movie for that exact reason. They made our city look like an inner city, which it isn't. It's a pretty nice city, but kids can get mixed up in drugs and gangs like any other city. This city doesn't chew you up and spit you back out. It was interesting to see what these kids went through though and the hardships they overcame. That win was amazing for those boys and this entire city. I'm not sure if anyone outside our city would enjoy this movie, its not as great as Remember The Titans, but it might be a good rental for a boring night.

I had no idea what this movie was - my husband picked it out, so I had no preconceived expectations or notions at all.

Let's just say I'm not a huge football fan although I know enough and I can follow the plays. By the end of the movie, I was sitting on the edge of my seat, practically hitting my husband with excitement, as if we were in the stands.

What a pleasure to see teenagers with such beautiful values and morals (and faces and bodies. Oops - did I say that out loud?). And we really appreciated not being bombarded with offensive language.

Gee, they really do still make good movies.

As an Abilene resident, and an Abilene High alum, I had many chances to be apart of this film. I'm glad I wasn't. While I've definitely seen worse films, and there are some moments of good. Both Abilene and this Story deserve better. I'm all for indie movies but for first time directors and writers, I feel more extensive research needed to be done for this film. Abilene may also have rough places but there is a lot of beauty here and I think the filmmakers chose not to focus on that. While Laurence Fishburne and Milo Gibson are fine actors, the direction is completely off and the entire movie feels like a needless copy pandering to the crowd who enjoyed "Friday Night Lights" further evidenced by the films title change from Brother's Keeper to Under the Stadium Lights. Which is not a fair title considering that all games filmed in this movie take place during the DAY! I had many friends as extras in the film and two of my brothers are even in this as extras. This film could have been something very special and open up the country to Abilene, TX. But it seems the filmmakers didn't truly care about telling a good story and only about making a quick buck and stretching their talents for the future. Who knows maybe there will be better films in the future one bad film doesn't make a person a bad storyteller. But for a city who really care for this team and the personal stories it highlights deserve a shot at something a whole lot bigger.

Full disclosure--I am from Abilene, and I think I have a pretty good eye for movies.

This film will not win any academy awards, but it is a good story that needed to be told.

The events in the movie are very close to true events and the lives the athletes led. They even took out some of the more sensational true events that were not as relevant to the plot.

I saw a rough cut of this movie when it was still called Brother's Keeper. From there, they re-edited the movie extensively, definitely for the better. If this was a Marvel movie, they would have done reshoots once they saw what they had in editing. Unfortunately, that was not feasible with this movie and budget. Just a few days of reshoots and pickups would have made a big difference. Seeing the evolution of the movie, I can tell what they wanted to do, but they just didn't have the tape. Hence, you are left with some plot holes, actual game tape that looks like it was filmed on VHS, and some other things I would have done differently. BTW, I say all this without ever having talked to anyone involved in directing or editing the movie, but it is pretty clear to me.

With the bad out of the way, I am really proud of Chad Mitchell and the stories he told. A lot of the kids were from very troubled backgrounds, and they had to be each other's family, because they had really bad home lives. They truly came together in a "Remember the Titans" way. That is not added to the story artificially.

They did a good job with shooting the big game. Again, it was mostly true to the real game, except the final score was a little more lopsided.

Milo Gibson did a good job, and Lawrence Fishburne did a great job. Fishburne played local BBQ legend Harold, and yes, he would randomly burst into song, whether in the kitchen or in the dining room. You can find it pretty easily on YouTube. Unfortunately, Fishburne was so magnetic, it kind of highlighted the lack of acting chops on some of the kids.

So, if you like football, Texas, high school kids overcoming obstacles, or all the above, I think you will enjoy this movie. As I said, it is a story that needs to be told.