Any Given Sunday
***
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Warner Bros. on March 31, 2000; certificate 15; 170
minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 2.35:1
Directed by Oliver Stone; produced by
Lauren Shuler Donner, Dan Halsted, Clayton Townsend.
Written by John Logan, Daniel Pyne, Oliver Stone.
Photographed by Salvatore Totino; edited by Stuart Levy,
Thomas J. Nordberg, Keith Salmon, Stuart
Waks.
CAST.....
Al Pacino..... Tony D'Amato
Jamie Foxx..... Willie Beamen
Cameron Diaz..... Christina Pagniacci
Dennis Quaid..... Jack "Cap" Rooney
James Woods..... Dr. Harvey Mandrake
LL Cool J..... Julian Washington
Matthew Modine..... Dr. Oliver Powers
Charlton Heston..... The Commissioner
Ann-Margaret..... Margaret Pagniacci
Lawrence Taylor..... Shark
"Any Given Sunday" is a dramatic
immersion in the world of American Football, looking further than commentators
and managers, and jumping right in there with the guys in the huddle. The
film gives us its view on the current state of the game, with character studies
of both players and executives, but also reminds us of the intense physical
experience of playing. For true sportsmen, that's the real thrill; for a
lot of people in this movie, it's just something that they must go through
in order to get big pay cheques.
At the heart of the movie's narrative are scenes
showing pitch action from a first-hand point of view. If sometimes they seem
irrelevant or confusing -- well, that's the point; players often look at
their games in the same light. Some reviews have accused the moments of being
unnecessary stylistic excess, but that's just because many journalists feel
obliged to make unfounded attacks on the director, Oliver Stone, a man who
does not avoid using bold techniques to tell his stories.
This time he follows a season in the life of the
Miami Sharks, an American Football team coached by Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino).
Tony has lost a few games in a row, and his old-school patience for things
to get better is not shared by today's press, who savage him whenever he
puts a foot wrong. The new owner of the Sharks, Christine Pagniacci (Cameron
Diaz), is just as hasty, and demands an immediate solution to her squad's
poor performance.
A young hotshot quarterback called Willie Beamen
(Jamie Foxx) could be the answer, because he has made some great plays in
a few successive games, and looks slick on magazine covers. Tony is cautious,
though; he senses that Beamen's ego could be dangerous, and the lad would
not be a wise replacement for 39-year old star performer Jack "Cap" Rooney
(Dennis Quaid).
Egos are a big influence on all this, because
professional sport is a business built around the talents of temperamental
athletes. Disagreements over management strategy also play a big part, because
it's a business full stop. And it's an atmosphere where ethical standards
are hard to keep up -- one of the doctors in "Any Given Sunday" feels it's
his duty to allow players to go on the field when injured, even at risk of
death, because "for these guys football is life!"
We're so used to thinking of everything as corrupt
in this day and age that none of the above is particularly surprising. It's
impressive, though, that Stone has managed to cover so many areas and get
such a convincing overview of a sport. My only complaint is that the structure
could have been tightened into something more urgent. Stone's best films
-- "Platoon", "Talk Radio", "Born on the Fourth of July", "JFK" -- sweep
us off our feet with angry gusto and big emotional payoffs. "Any Given Sunday"
is content to document, observe and convey. While it does all these things
well, a little more passion would not have gone amiss.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
2000 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2000 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)