Any Given Sunday

Has to be the worst movie of the year by virtue of the following logic: 1) I love football 2) I love movies 3) I love Al Pacino 4) I found this movie to be loud, long, boring and pointless. How can one make a boring movie about football!? I hoped with all the real football talent in cameos that I might get a bit of an accurate look at what a football team is like. But Stone just uses his subject matter to jack up the volume. A waste of time talent and money. More objections at kenmorefield.com for those who care to read the extended diatribe.

There's no way this film has ever been anything less than a 10. From the first time I watched it in 1999 to tonight in 2019. Pacino is amazing, the script and direction is amazing. Soundtrack amazing. Supporting cast (Diaz, ll cool j, foxx, woods, modine, mcginley, etc etc etc) amazing. And the speech, if you don't know it even without having seen the film then you are neither a sports or motivational speech fan

When Oliver Stone isn't flaunting wild conspiracy theories, he actually gets down to the business of making some really good films. And Any Given Sunday is definitely one of those. It's a difficult perspective for me to write about this movie as my favorite spectator sport is baseball rather than football. But the business end of it is virtually the same. Curiously enough I was in Miami last week and saw the Florida Marlins home opener. They are going through some of the same dealings with the Miami city fathers about a new stadium that you see Cameron Diaz having with Clifton Davis in this film. There's a possibility that Miami will not have its major league baseball franchise soon. Cameron Diaz is the young owner of the Miami Sharks professional football team who inherited it from her late father who is described as one of the prominent owners in the sport, a kind of combination of Wellington Mara and George Halas. Her father gave Coach Al Pacino complete latitude to deal with his players, but Cameron is taking George Steinbrenner as her role model. Al Pacino joins the ranks of players who have done outstanding portrayals of athletic coaches. It's an honorable tradition going back to Pat O'Brien as Knute Rockne. I'm not sure how Rockne would have done in the era of seven figure salaries, but Pacino is adapting the best way he can. When I was a kid in NYC in the fifties following our three major league baseball teams, one of the great constants was Casey Stengel winning that American League pennant for the New York Yankees with Yogi Berra behind the plate. The catcher's job is similar to the quarterback's in football in that he sees the whole game and actually sets the pace in calling the pitches. As Yogi's skills deteriorated over time, Casey could never quite pull the plug on him as the regular catcher. As a result, Elston Howard who would have been a regular on any other team never amassed the statistics that probably would have put him in the Hall of Fame. Pacino has that kind of dilemma here. A veteran quarterback in Dennis Quaid and an up and coming talent in Jamie Fox. Quaid's skills are deteriorating, but he has the heart of a warrior which Pacino tells him in my favorite moment in the film. And the lesson Fox learns from Pacino and Quaid is that if the team doesn't respect you, you don't lead winners. And winning is the bottom line. There are a whole lot of good performances here in minor roles, the hallmark of a great film. James Woods as the slimy team doctor, Ann-Margret as Cameron Diaz's mother, LL Cool J as a defensive lineman who may have taken one hit too many. And what a casting coup Oliver Stone pulled off in getting Charlton Heston for a small role as the football commissioner. Who better to run professional football than the guy who brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai. I think even non-sports fans can appreciate this film.

Maybe it's just me, but when I hear about an Oliver Stone directed football movie starring none other than Al Pacino I'm expecting a masterpiece. That's why I was quite taken aback by how much of a turd Any Given Sunday is. It's the story of fictional NFL team the Miami Sharks. Al Pacino is the team's head coach who is trying to desperately to take them to the playoffs, but to do so he must battle against unnecessary roughness on and off the field. Dennis Quaid plays the teams star quarterback who, after a nasty hit, is put out of the game and replaced by Jamie Foxx who somehow becomes a superstar after winning just two games, because that's how the NFL works, right? Turmoil continually befalls the team as they try to keep it together so they can go all the way and have the season of a lifetime. What I love about Oliver Stone is the way he can take something we've seen plenty of times before and make it into something highly original and absolutely brilliant. He changed the face of war movies with his robust shout out to the troops in Platoon. He took a rock and roll biopic and turned it into an existential masterpiece with The Doors. He allowed the presidential biopic to soar to new heights with JFK. So his attempt at a football movie should have been revolutionary. But instead we are given this sappy, cheesy, poorly written, poorly directed stinker of a film. What the hell happened? Any Given Sunday is just one big melting pot of clichés. There is absolutely nothing original here for a football film. You might not realize it, but you know the entire plot of the film before you ever hit play. I'm not sure that this film get any more obvious. It is the complete package of typical football film story lines. You have the tormented coach who can't keep his team together. The all-star quarterback who gets injured, letting the far superior rookie play. Said rookie is an egomaniac who can't get his life together because of the excess of fame. But of course a few inspirational speeches from coach and the whole team is golden once again. The flat lining lack of originality in this film is appalling. However, what's even more appalling is Oliver Stone's god awful direction. This film is so sporadic and lacks any kind of structure to its editing. We are constantly barraged by quick cuts that do nothing but distract and quickly become very annoying. The look of this film is supposed to seem fun and artistic, but really it is just pretentious. Stone is trying to do something talented with the direction here, but it doesn't work at all and only gets in the way. There is hardly a shot in this film that lasts for more than 30 seconds. The camera will be focused on one person as they deliver a monologue, but the camera constantly changes angle on them, jumping from spot to spot on their face which gets ridiculously annoying. Stone has displayed such finesse and such raw talent for direction in the past. I really don't know what happened here. Any Given Sunday is easily one of the biggest wastes of close to three hours of my life. It's a truly terrible film that lacks any kind of control, structure, meaning, or purpose. Al Pacino does a nice job while the rest of the cast are pretty sorry. A football film from Oliver Stone should stand out amongst all other football films, but instead this film just takes every football film cliché and applies that to itself, never raising the bar of originality. The only reason this film would stand out amongst others like is would be because it is so horrible. I never thought I'd say this about an Oliver Stone film but... I hate this film.

The positives in the movie was a good cast. I don't like Cameron Diaz in most roles, but this was her best one by far. She is very good as a woman owner of a football team trying very hard to do it as a woman. In addition, at times the football action was entertaining. It is the "off-field" dramas that mar the film substantially. First of all, it was a professional football team. In the real world of pro football, the quarterback doesn't puke on the field. There are fans watching the game. James Wood's role was largely comical and irrelevant. Since pro football is a multi-billion dollar business, "amoral" doctors are not going to be hired or tolerated. It was also almost playoffs. As bad as the sport's world seems, players don't party openly, do drugs, and hire prostitutes right before the playoffs. Even the most irresponsible football players are not that dumb, because at that point of the season they wouldn't want the entire team and city hating them. The coach of a football team would be planning plays after the game, not drinking at bars and being propositioned by prostitutes. A coach wouldn't openly scowl, when his quarterback deviates from the play slightly, if it results in a win. Pro football coaches are celebrities, and wouldn't scowl when their team won as a result of a player being independent minded. The coach may after the game in the locker room remind the quarterback that there is a game plan. That was another major wrong with this film. There was only a play called in the last few seconds of the final regular season game. Pro football is all about plays. All the coach did was give pep talks. So, the film was basically ruined by unrealistic, exaggerated scenarios. Stone should have spent more time studying the real game of football, instead of some Hollywood interpretation. The acting was good, and at times there was an attempt to show that football is a very rough sport. However, I can not really recommend this film, other than being slightly entertaining, and possessing a good cast of actors.

I just got back from "AGS". After seeing it, I'm convinced that no matter how much it's written how he extensively researched the film, Stone NEVER has watched an NFL game in his life. Great cinematography ? Give me a break. The game montages were almost unviewable and 90% of the other shots in the film were close-ups. Was there ANYTHING in this movie that wasn't brought up in "North Dallas Forty" ? Aging star player ... check. Young hot shot .... check. Painkillers .... check. Owner who doesn't "get it" .... check. Crazy off-field behavior .... check Also, it's the playoffs in Dallas (i.e Dec or Jan) in an outdoor stadium, yet people sitting there in tank-tops and shorts ! And what was with those lights ? Were they playing in a Japanese Kabuki theater or a sports stadium ? And the strategy shown in the game was laughable. It's fourth & 1 inside the "Sharks'" 30. Dallas leads 35-31. KICK THE FRIGGING FIELD GOAL. Not only would this had made sense football-wise, but you'd then have an even better final sequence where they could have scored and had to go for the two-point conversion. Hell, tie the game w/ the extra point and Stone could have made it an even 3 hours with overtime. Were the lame montages of "old time" football players supposed to be a tribute to the game ? Give me a break. And the script ... ugh. More cliches than you can shake a stick at .. oops, there's another one. "Slapshot" was better than this movie. By far. 1/10. Skips this at all costs.

Any Given Sunday is one of Oliver Stone's most enjoyable movies. Sunday is pure entertainment, an action-packed spectacle that will delight even the most ardent sports enthusiast. Stone draws on the usual assortment of sports movie clichés, but he directs his actors, including Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, Dennis Quaid, and LL Cool J, into such passionate and intense performances, that the movie is able to transcend its familiar material. While its 160-minute running time is a bit of a detriment, AGS works overall as a superior piece of escapist entertainment. Also, the locker room scene, which showcases a confrontation between Cameron Diaz and a football player with a giant *, is a classic.

I don't intend to add to the many positive comments about this movie. I agree with them. But from another perspective: First, I have never been a football fan. However, any movie that combines Oliver Stone and Al Pacino has to get my interests. I loved it. One thing that did impress me more than anything else was the quality of the sound design. The 3 dimensional noises in the huddle, on the line, from the grandstands; the growls and other sounds from the players; these things made the movie live and my blood boil. I was breathless. Then these things interspersed with dead silences and slow motion dreamlike sequences gave the action a spiritual quality. I stayed for the credits to see who had done this sound work and I think Wylie Stateman will get, at the very least, an Oscar nomination for sound design. If you ever wondered what this credit meant, see this movie and you will know. This movie would have lost a great deal of its punch without that sound designer's talent.

I think the movie as a whole was excellent. Oliver Stone did a great job, I felt as though I was inside the screen. The almost 3 hours didn't even feel like it, it felt like watching a Football game on Any Given Sunday. Jamie Foxx did a great job, you loved him at times and hated him at times, and he gave you great reason to do either. And of course Al Pacino was the man as always, playing a coach with heart and blowing you away at the end. Cameron Diaz was the best wicked witch, just a hard-core display of a woman of the millenium. All in all, anyone who thinks this movie had no plot, wasn't paying attention. All you have to do is see the change in the characters throughout the movie, and what the game meant to each one of them: from the owner, to the coach, to the players, to the doctors, to the families. Perfect example is the characters of both Ann Margaret and Lauren Holly. There is a lot of meaning in this movie. Kudos!

source: Any Given Sunday