ANY GIVEN SUNDAY
SYNOPSIS:
Once the darlings of the football league, the Miami Sharks are heading for their fourth
straight defeat and everyone is looking to veteran coach Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino) to do
something about it. Team owner Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz), who has taken over
following the death of her father, is not a fan of D'Amato's coaching tactics. She's
convinced the Sharks' losing streak can be directly attributed to D'Amato's reluctance to
replace his aging and injured one time star quarterback, Jack Rooney (Dennis Quaid), with
brash rookie Willie Beaman (Jamie Foxx), who, in addition to his football skills, readily
personifies Pagliacci's "win at all cost, show me the money" credo. With the
all-important finals coming up, D'Amato knows that a wrong decision will not only knock
his team out of the competition, it could also signal the end of his career.
"There's no such thing as a boring Oliver Stone film. Even if you haven't got a clue
what everyone's talking about and doing for most of the 151 minutes of Any Given Sunday,
you can always rely on Stone to give you something to remember. In this case it's a
collection of fine performances from a cast headed by Pacino as the "to hell and
back" coach, Cameron Diaz as the ball-busting team owner with something to prove,
Quaid as the broken down old trooper wondering if it's all still worth it and newcomer
Jamie Foxx as the "All About Eve"
understudy stealing the limelight from the faded star. Add to that another dynamite James
Woods performance as a medico with questionable ethics and football legend/blaxploitation
icon Jim Brown supplying soul and grit as the assistant coach and there's plenty to admire
even if, like me, you have no idea what a "4.8 yard per carry" statistic means.
That's the
insurmountable hurdle placed in front of non-gridiron aware audiences who have little
chance to become involved with a film littered with references to the minute details of
the game. Stone obviously loves this stop-start sport with teams comprising of dozens of
players (he turns up in a continuing cameo as a TV commentator) and I'm sure it gives a
searingly true depiction of what goes down on and off the field. It's just a shame (even
with 12 minutes cut from the original running time) that it means so little unless you
understand it. Further plusses include cinematography by Salvatore Totino which serve up
the LSD trip visuals for which Stone is justly famed, a narrative which moves at a punchy
pace and dynamic editing which makes the most incomprehensible game come alive at times.
Even with all its assets this still feels like a two and a half hour prologue for a film
which never arrives and is best approached as a lengthy documentary about a strange,
particularly American ritual."
Richard Kuipers
"After spending a decade and a half applying a blow torch to the belly of
financial institutions (Wall Street), presidential politics (JFK & Nixon) and
manipulative and duplicitous media (Natural Born Killers), Oliver Stone has focused his
proven talent for vivisection on the world of big time American football. On the surface,
the rogue's gallery Stone has assembled - the harried coach facing a career meltdown, the
veteran player forced to make room for the younger model, the arrogant team doctor who
thinks nothing of sending a seriously injured player back on the field, and even the
cynical sports writer peddling a bucketful of contempt - may look like they've been
cobbled together from a thousand old sports movies, but as his early films readily
testify, the director has never been one for suffering stereotypes gladly. Stone's goal
here is to illustrate how what once was a fairly uncomplicated game which wore its mantles
of integrity and loyality with considerable pride, has become a corporate juggernaut being
run along tracks greased with unbridled greed and corruption. It's a complex, cacophonous
world where egos need more massaging than hamstrings and every touchdown is accompanied by
the unmistakable ping of the cash register ringing up another sale. To orchestrate this
furiously paced, overblown homage to capitalism and testosterone, Stone's restless cameras
employ nervous jump cuts to carry the viewer from the inner sanctum of the noisy
boardroom, to the charged atmosphere of the locker room, and finally on to the thundering,
Dolby-accented Sturm und Drung of the on-field battle itself. It looks like a logistical
nightmare but Stone and his terrific cast pull it off magnificently."
Leo Cameron
"In many ways, this is a marginal movie. It depends so much on a clear
understanding of, and empathy for, the kind of devotion that many Americans have for their
football - it's a complicated feeling which is not replicated in many other sports or
countries. To many Americans, it will probably seem like Oliver Stone has captured
something essential about their character. To many other cinema-goers, particularly those
outside the USA, it will probably look like predictable masturbation. There is certainly
enough to maintain interest at a superficial level. Stone has crafted some thumping
stretches of on-field action which undoubtedly extend the cinematic approach to sport. The
cast give overall solid performances, though the idea of Cameron Diaz as a football team
owner is a paradox which hints at a "jobs-for-the-girls" approach. In the end,
it is the characters themselves who fail to offer much hope. Outside football, they are
nothing. They have no life, they have no income, they have no knowledge, they have no
history. Even those characters who come across as having some kind of soul are still tied
to a formula which is essentially heartless. If they were soldiers, it may come across as
noble. In this case, it comes across as pitiful. Oliver Stone normally asks a lot of his
audience. In this instance, he doesn't ask for much. There are no lingering questions,
there are no loose ends, there is no questioning of possibilities. Coming from a man who
has such a strong history of pushing the boundaries of social history in the way Oliver
Stone has, it's plain disappointing."
Anthony Mason
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CRITICAL COUNT
Favourable: 1
Unfavourable: 1
Mixed: 1
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ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (MA)
(US)
CAST: Al Pacino, Dennis Quaid, James Wood, Edward Burns, Ann Margaret, Cameron Diaz,
Clifton Davis, Charlton Heston, Lauren Holly, LL Cool J, Matthew Modine,
DIRECTOR: Oliver Stone
PRODUCER: Dan Halsted, Lauren Shuler Donner, Clayton Townsend
SCRIPT: John Logan (screen story) Daniel Pyne (screen story) Oliver Stone, Pat Toomay
(novel)
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Salvatore Totino
EDITORS: Stuart Levy, Michael Mees, Thomas J. Nordberg, Keith Salmon, Stuart Waks
MUSIC: Richard Horowitz
PRODUCTION DESIGN: Victor Kempster
RUNNING TIME: 162 minutes
AUSTRALIAN DISTRIBUTOR: Roadshow
AUSTRALIAN RELEASE: July 27, 2000
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