Yar, you be here: Any Given Sunday (Special Edition Director's Cut) - Oliver Stone Collection > Customer Reviews

Any Given Sunday (Special Edition Director's Cut) - Oliver Stone Collection Customer Reviews (34 - 36 of 43 Reviews)

Simple plot: The Miami Sharks are in trouble, and everyone involved with the team must take some huge risks in order to make it this season.

Complex issues: Behind the thin veneer of fan hype and sports hero lifestyle, is a head-spinning web of moral ambiguities, deceit, and personal ambition. So who better than Oliver Stone to take us behind the scenes and craft a Greek drama out of the tension between the players, the managers, and the business owners.

In classic Stone style, the plight of black players, used for their athletic talent but left dangling financially and often discarded, is at last presented with vigorous eloquence -- though I felt it was a little too hastily jammed into the plot, and deserved more airtime.

Brilliantly photographed, solidly acted, AGS teaches and informs about the game within the game. Look for career-expanding dramatic performances by Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz. And for you sports lovers ... the football action sequences have a palpable physical impact that reaches out and crunches you in your armchair.

Any Given Sunday is classic American film-making. We're talking Oscars here.

Stone's Modern Day Gladiator Movie
You can always count on Oliver Stone to have something interesting to say. In "Any Given Sunday", he focuses his lens on the world of pro football and treats us to a dizzying vision of million dollar egos, cortisone shots, and concussions.

The story centers on Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino), a battle weary coach whose old school mentality is behind the times. Pacino is at his best as a mess of a drunk, his sunken expression hanging off his face from the weight of his burden throughout. When his starting quarterback gets hurt (Quaid), Pacino looks to Willy Beaman, played by a surprisingly good Jaime Foxx. Foxx is the future of football, a cocky gunslinger who has speed to burn (Stone foresaw the new NFL QB: McNabb, Vick). At the movie's center is the conflict between old vs. new, the player vs. the team, and the cutthroat deals made behind the scenes.

This is a film about excess. From the all-star cast (Pacino, Foxx, Diaz, Quaid, Woods, LL Cool J, Margaret, Lancaster, L.T. and Jim Brown), to its indulgent criss-cut editing (brilliant during game scenes, excessive in others), to its run time (two and a half plus hours), this modern day gladiator movie balloons with bigness.

Kinetic and stylized, the film suffers from a familiar story and characters that are simply too unsympathetic to root for. And by the movie's end, redemption comes all too neatly during the final game (In mythic fashion, the team visits the dragon's lair to battle the Dallas "Knights."). If you're a fan of Oliver Stone or a fan of football, "Any Given Sunday" is worth a look. But at more than two and a half hours, you may find better things to do with your time- like watching a real game.

I love Oliver Stone
but this movie is excruciating to watch if you're a true football fan (that is a fan of the strategy, rather than the hip-hop/Texas dumbass cultures it often represents). Stone does do a good job of capturing all that is wrong with professional ball. But none of it is anything that a football fan doesn't already know. The only thing he puts any humanity into is the Dennis Quaid character. And that storyline uses, what, 15 minutes of the 3 1/2 hours of rap, drug use, misogyny, money-grubbing and power tripping that we have to sit through to endure this film. How long can a movie be? Well, when the credits start rolling before the dialogue is even finished, you know somebody other than yourself had a problem with the film's length.
This movie is way over the top in every category except 'heart'. And heart is a true athlete's greatest attribute. So in comparison to Rudy or Hoosiers or Brian's Song or almost any other sports flick out there, this film is a travesty. If, however, you want to compare it to Wall Street, it's probably one of the truer business movies available. I personally was expecting to see a football film. Instead I wasted 3 1/2 hours of my life watching corruption. I can do that come Monday at work.