Any Given Sunday

Rather thin threads of narrative joined by visceral images of high impact sport feature in Any Given Sunday... Tony D`Amato (Al Pacino) is having a bad run as coach of the Miami Sharks, they`ve lost their last three games and the playoffs are looming. This is not going down well with the Shark`s owner Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz ) who inherited the team from her father. She`s not really a lover of the game like Tony, she`s a corporate shark who knows how to value the team to the nearest $100 million. The Sharks have their problems - veteran quarterback Jack Cap Rooney (Dennis Quaid) has serious back injuries and upstart replacement Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx) just can`t stop recent success going to his head... and the team doctors James Woods and Matthew Modine are at odds on ethics...

It`s the old story - honour versus money...I find the subtleties of gridiron rather elusive but fortunately there`s not a lot that`s subtle about this movie. Stone, who plays a commentator, lets it all hang out. Quick cuts, slo-mo, vivid reds, black and white, set piece power plays on the sidelines, a morality tale about playing for the team is repeated quite often, just so we get it. It isn`t about winning, it`s about how you play the game. Bull Durham proved what you can do with a sports as metaphor for life movie but Oliver Stone just goes for it head on...

David`s Comment:
Not my kind of movie, but given plenty of energy by Oliver Stone and very fine performances from Al Pacino, James Woods and the rest. I was puzzled by the presence of Charlton Heston prominently on a large TV screen in BEN-HUR and later playing a football official. In the longer version I saw in America, there was far too much football; I gather this has been trimmed. The characters are interesting, especially Pacino as the man with nothing in his life but the game which is being soiled by crass commercialsm.