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 Film Review - Any Given Sunday

You think you're going to the theatre to see a movie about football. You get a little more than you bargained for.

Any Given Sunday is a football soap opera. It details the emotional roller coaster of professional sports from the unique perspectives of each character.

Al Pacino plays Tony D'Amato, the coach who has decades in the game. He worries about holding the team together. He is pulled in opposite directions from his desire to win, to the wants of a fairly new owner (Cameron Diaz).

Diaz's Christina Pagniacci inherited the team from her father. She is eager to make her own mark on the game. To do this, she and D'Amato are almost constantly butting heads. Throughout all of their arguments, the spectre of Pagniacci's dead father looms. One gets the impression that Pagniacci is afraid that she can not live up to his name. An interesting twist on the traditional father-son rivalry.

D'Amato is saddled with Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx), a third string quarterback, after he looses his first and seconds strings in two consecutive plays. Beamen is completely un-tested. He throws up on the field. This later becomes his trademark. If he pukes in the game, the other team is in for a whooping. Fame goes straight to Beamen's head, and almost all by himself he tears the team apart.

What works about this picture is that there really aren't any bad guys. We can identify with the emotions of all of the characters. We understand why they are these people. It's easy for a sports movie to become monotonous in shots on the field that look just like every other shot. It's the story and characters that keep Any Given Sunday from falling into this trap.

Oliver Stone has also made the picture very easy to look at with a combination of TV-style coverage of the games, as well as some very creative montage shots of characters which accurately depict their emotions. This is film making that has been properly planned, shot, and edited.

I often criticize Stone for the long lengths of his pictures. I'm not going on this one. It's as long as it needs to be. The quick pace of the film helps it through the length without us sitting back and asking, "When is this over?"

If you're into football, you like nicely shot film, or want to see characters fully portrayed on the screen. These are the reasons to see Any Given Sunday.

Slight Suction!

Film Facts

    Cast
  • Al Pacino
  • Cameron Diaz
  • Jamie Foxx
  • Dennis Quaid
  • James Woods
  • Elizabeth Berkley
  • Lauren Holly
  • Lawrence Taylor
  • LL Cool J
  • Matthew Modine
  • Charlton Heston
  • Ann-Margret
  • Aaron Eckhart
  • John C. McGinley
  • Bill Bellamy
  • Andrew Bryniarski
  • Lela Rochon
  • James Karen
  • Gianni Russo
  • Duane Martin
  • Clifton Davis
  • John Daniel
  • Patrick O'Hara
  • Jerry A. Sharp
  • Marty Wright
  • Mazio Royster
  • Todd Smith
  • Jamie Williams
  • Craig Thompson
  • Craig Orvis
  • Rick Johnson
  • Bjorn Nittmo
  • Matt Martinez
  • Pete Ohnegian
  • John Clark
  • Brian E. O'Neal
  • Robert L. Goff
  • Joseph Unitas
  • J.V. Goodman
  • Skip McClendon
  • Derrick Lassic
  • Fred Lester
  • Eric Miller
  • Todd Eric Yeaman
  • Jim Brown
  • Jani Vorwerk
  • C. Ashley Sherman
  • Connell Spain Jr.
  • Otis Mounds
  • Matt Storm
  • Michael Osuna
  • Connell Maynor
  • Marty Hochertz
  • Robert Gordon
  • Barry Wagner
  • Richard McKenzie
  • Sean Hamlet
  • Robert Grogan
  • Nyle Wiren
  • Michael Groh III
  • Len Johnson
  • Basil Proctor
  • Mathew Keneley
  • Kevin Reid
  • Tony Egues
  • Marc Claus
  • Michelle A. Porachan
  • Tyler Cravens
  • James A. Bachand
  • Jason Rubenstein
  • Art Young
  • William Hanlon
  • Allan Graf
  • Joseph W. Underwood
  • Timothy F. Crowley
  • Steve Raulerson
  • Phil Latzman
  • Mark Ellis
  • Anthony L. Tanzi
  • Joseph A. Wilson
  • Margaret Betts
  • Antares Davis
  • Liz Petterson
  • Lester Speight
  • Daniel Marino
  • Alexandra L. Hellman
  • Hunter White
  • Kirsten Krueger
  • Tonya Oliver
  • Mary Fanaro
  • Kathy Davis Alzado
  • Nikki Novak
  • Lisa Ann Phillips
  • Joanna Theobalds
  • Amy Dorris
  • Sarah Penman
  • Sacha Voski
  • Michelle Bernard
  • Cat Wallace
  • Carin Abnathy
  • Micah West
  • Christy Tummond
  • Eva Tamargo Lemus
  • Debbie Howard
  • Tucker Brown
  • Bob St. Clair
  • Y.A. Tittle
  • Pat Toomay
  • Dick Butkus
  • Warren Moon
  • Johnny Unitas
  • Bruce C. Hardy
  • Terrell Owens
  • Irving Fryar
  • Joe Schmidt
  • Ricky Watters
  • Meira Moet
  • Rhonda Adams
  • Glynnis Lawson
  • Jessie Alexander
  • Melissa Jayne
  • Sarah Bredell
  • Michelle Beisner
  • Cleo Bayla
  • Luna Abdi Mohamed
  • Olivia Fullerton
  • Biba Mbayi
  • Jaime Bergman
  • Dawn Crawford
  • Gwendolyn Osborne
  • Celia Evans
  • Nichole Robinson
  • Janet Manns
  • Andrea Horka
  • Hermine Kraljevic
  • Mercy Lopez
  • Maria E. Heredia
  • Jeannie Mustelier
  • Delia Sheppard
  • Donna Preudhomme
  • Jack G. Spirtos
  • Sean Stone
  • Michael Stone
  • Tara Stone
  • Frank J. Adler
  • Doug Cowden
  • Antoni Corone
  • Drew Rosenhaus
  • Hunter Reno
  • Dorothy J. Morrison
  • Vincent DiFatta
  • Jim Gasser
  • Allen Reidel
  • Luciano Armellino
  • Myriam Davoisne-Bruni
  • Rosa Iveth Cortez
  • Melinda Renna
  • Doris Condom
  • Todd Bacile
  • Dion Brown
  • James Caviezel
  • Martin Ebenhack
  • Felipe Flip Gomez
  • Isaac Gomez
  • Roger Hamilton
  • Paul Heckmann
  • Beau Holden
  • RJ Johnson
  • Anton Justin
  • Cara Ann Kinder
  • Rick Michaels
  • Nicole Mujica
  • Daniel Ohana
  • E. Wells Oliver
  • Robert Paget
  • Ilenia Sanchez
  • Eduardo Koki Valdes
  • Mario Avila
  • Lisa Bice
  • Joshua David Brown
  • Jeremy Denzlinger
  • Anik Dufour
  • Karin M. Gaarder
  • Jose Manuel Garcia
  • Wayne Grassfield
  • Alex Harder
  • Bruce Jonson
  • Jeremy Moran
  • Jess Price
  • Stacy Slanina
  • Oliver Stone
  • Barry Switzer
  • Mark Edward Walters
  • John Weyand
  • Andrew Bernard Wolff
  • Nicholas Patrick Wolff

Directed by Oliver Stone

Released in 1999

MPAA Rating: R

Reviewed by Mongo