‘Any Given Sunday’ Review: Oliver Stone Movie (1999)

On December 22, 1999, Warner Bros. released the Oliver Stone-directed NFL drama Any Given Sunday in theaters, where it went on to cross the $100 million mark globally. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below:

Oliver Stone is one of film’s leading depictions of warfare, so it’s only logical that he should turn his attention to the sports gladiators, professional football players. Any given Sunday is the result, a film filled with cynicism and suffocating with overbearing imagery that nevertheless ends up buying into many of the myths surrounding the sport. Of two minds about nearly every issue the film addresses anyway, Stone further allows his point of view to be smothered in high-powered action and turbocharged editing.

Jocks and guys interested in sports appear as the most logical audience for Any given Sundaybut even they can’t be blamed for flinching from the visual assault. Featuring Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz and a host of famous actors and such ex-football greats as Jim Brown and Lawrence Taylor, Any given Sunday can expect a strong first quarter. But as the clock winds down, the amount may well have dwindled.

The film follows the fictional Miami Sharks mid-season, just as an injury to quarterback “Cap” Rooney (Dennis Quaid) threatens their playoff hopes. The team’s surprising savior is Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx), a third-string quarterback with a penchant for eating his lunch during games. Willie throws a few touch downs, wins a few games and, as this movie has it, achieves instant fame as the star of music videos and a national magazine cover.

The question of who will start once Cap recovers from his injury becomes a running battle between longtime head coach Tony D’Ama to (Pacino) and ruthless team owner Christina Pagniacci (Diaz), who, after inheriting the team from her father is determined to. to drive it with unsentimental eyes focused on the bottom line.

Along the way, questions are raised about race, ego, sports medicine, college recruiting, media overkill, female groupies, performance clauses in players’ contracts and bitter divisions within the team itself. That modern sports suffer from these and other problems is no great surprise. But that a poor team would experience all these problems in less than half a season is a stretch.

And Stone, acting as if he’s uncovered a vast conspiracy, hammers home these points with all the finesse of a power tool. Then, in case any soul in the audience doesn’t understand, Stone gives us rambunctious conversations between the coach and his defensive coordinator (Brown) about the old days and the new ways they then reject.

There is no area of ​​pro football where Stone and fellow writers John Logan and Daniel Pyne don’t see money-hungry, ego-satisfying bad behavior. But at the film’s heart-pounding climax, as the Sharks drive for a potential game-winning touchdown in the playoffs, the film buys into all the boy legends: the Knute Rockne-like locker room talk, the greedy clichés about being a man and the importance of team.

The film’s best moments take place in the trenches, as sweating, bloodied men pound each other’s bodies over a few meters of ground. Stone amps up the sound effects until the viewer can almost feel the brutal, bone-crushing hits. But even here the law of diminishing returns kicks in, as seemingly half of the film’s 160 minutes is devoted to gridiron warfare.

But for all this surface flash, the film never digs deep into its characters. Insight belongs to freshman psychology: Tony is driven by the early loss of a father; Willie never got to be his father’s son; Christina strives to be the son her father never had.

And the moment you see James Woods’ Dr. The Feelgood team’s orthopedist or Matthew Modine’s sensitive internist or Lawrence Taylor’s hard-nosed linebacker determined to pad his stats, you know who these people are, and nothing ever changes or is more revealing than first. impression.

Salvatore Totino’s cinematography and Victor Kempster’s production design are eye-catching. But in the end, it’s too much of a good thing. — Kirk Honeycutt, originally published on December 20, 1999