Any Given Sunday

There's scarcely a scene in which the actors, action and sound track aren't cranked up to maximum intensity.

Features convincing, often soaring, performances by a savvy cast that must have gotten adrenaline shots administered by Stone himself.

Big, bold, brash and occasionally brilliant.

Far too long, but its rambunctiousness is engaging, propelled by Stone's virtuosic quick-cutting.

Ends up less than the sum of its many, often interesting parts.

Just watching the trailer for Oliver Stone's new football epic a few weeks back left me with a grating headache; watching the whole sweaty film practically put me in the ICU.

A football film made by a man who apparently has seen little of the game outside of movies, and not very good ones at that.

Love sports movies. Especially when there's a lot of football in it. This goes through a whole seasons worth. Love it!

On the one side the movies shows some interesting aspects of the sports world. There are some famous actors who are acting well of course. On the other side the scenes were a bit too dramatic and exaggerated the situations in my view.

the mediocrity of the genre.. Any Given Sunday Any Given Sunday is a character driven sport drama about the inner world and politics that brews in behind the football games. With unnecessary slow motions, edgy and benign camera work and amateur editing the feature shucks aways its own integrity before it build up a definite mannerism. The semantics of the tale is off putting as it either is raw dry news or over thought out shallow emotional drama. There is not a single piece of loose thread among these many characters and their plot tracks that urges the viewers to root for more or even accept the offered banal ideology. The conversations are pragmatic with some intriguing even though textbook and one dimensional characters, that is tossed decently by the performers in here. The annoyingly loud argumentative conversations, scattered structure and cheesy one liners are the primary anchors why it sinks so bad. The background score is loud, the set pieces are bling, the cinematography is daft and editing is more questionable than feasible. Pacino's portrayal is moving and effective but as the characteristics and substance offered to the character is irritatingly loud henceforth fails to create the anticipated impact. The supporting characters are just chess pieces that seem to have misplaced and existed only to sacrifice to drive the track to the pit and with a water thin material as such Diaz, Foxx and Quaid fails to deliver. Stone's attempt to offer the football fans the time of their life, unfortunately wasn't planned or polished to even be what it was in the script; swing and a miss. Conversations between Pacino and Foxx and Pacino's monologues and ideology are the only high points of the feature. Any Given Sunday is not a disappointment because it ain't well crafted, it is misconceived because it fails to even live up to the mediocrity of the genre.

A poorly written, terribly executed, overly long, and over the top melodrama, Any Given Sunday is a football film that was lukewarm at the time of it's release, and one that has rotted horribly. This movie is over-confident in how good it is, and it makes many mistakes. For one, the same shots are reused and super imposed over each other time and time again, and this comes off as lazy rather than as meaningful repetition. Second, numerous title drops come off as over indulgent rather than organic. Third, this movie compares itself to Ben-Hur, and even portraying football as war does not even put this movie in the same ballpark as Ben-Hur. Fourth, the acting is all over the place, with some decent performances sprinkled in, but most scenes are so over the top and unbelievable that I found myself thinking this was a comedy. There are many better football films out there than Any Given Sunday. I highly encourage you to watch those instead. The only reason this film gets a 2 instead of a 0 is because there are some good performances (Al Pacino's speech at the climax, for instance) and the ensemble cast does mesh well on the rare occasion they are allowed to interact with each other instead of worshipping football as some holy transcendent ideal without ever making the argument for it.

A movie about football? Whatever keeps men from murdering their entire family, I guess.