director
Oliver
Stone
screenwriters
John Logan
Oliver Stone
story by
Daniel
Pyne
John Logan
producers
Dan Halsted
Lauren Shuler Donner
Clayton Townsend
cinematographer
Salvatore Totino
music
Michael A. Reagan
Robbie Robertson
editors
Stuart Levy
Thomas J. Nordberg
Keith Salmon
Stuart Waks
cast
Al Pacino (Tony D'Amato)
Cameron Diaz (Christina Pagniacci)
Dennis Quaid (Cap Rooney)
James Woods (Dr. Harvey Mandrake)
Jamie Foxx (Willie Beamen)
LL Cool J (J-Man)
Matthew Modine (Dr. Ollie Powers)
Jim Brown (Montezuma Monroe)
Lawrence Taylor (Shark)
Bill Bellamy (Jimmy Sanderson)
Lela Rochon (Vanessa Struthers)
Lauren Holly (Cindy Rooney)
Ann-Margret (Margaret Pagniacci)
Aaron Eckhart (Nick Crozier)
Elizabeth Berkley (Mandy)
Charlton Heston (Commissioner)
John C. McGinley (Jack Rose)
James Karen (Ed Phillips)
Duane Martin (Willie's Agent)
Clifton Davis (Mayor Tyrone Smalls)
Oliver Stone (Tug Kowalski)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 162m
u.s.
release: 12/22/99
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other oliver
stone films
reviewed on this website:
- alexander
- natural born killers
- nixon
- u-turn
- world trade center
|
Has
Oliver Stone burned out on political cinema? There was a time
when his movies seemed to matter -- when his vision, from the
muckraking Salvador to the notorious Natural
Born Killers, turned an ugly funhouse mirror on the American
nightmare. Two years ago, Stone made the offbeat film noir U-Turn, which for him amounted to goofing
off. It was, admittedly, a relief to see him just settle down
and have fun with a movie and not try to rock our conscience.
But in Stone's new one, Any Given Sunday, he continues
to goof off -- this time at very tedious length.
Stone's JFK warranted its three-hour-plus running time,
as did his Nixon. But what made
him think a movie about a fictional football team -- especially
one with such a banal story -- needed to sprawl for two hours
and forty-two minutes? Any Given Sunday is about Tony
D'Amato (Al Pacino), head coach of the Miami Sharks, who are
on a four-game losing streak. The Sharks' reliable veteran quarterback
(Dennis Quaid, equally as reliable) has been sidelined, and the
reins pass to an untested rookie, Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx).
Willie is soon making up his own plays and "putting points
on the board." He gets a big head, while Tony frets and
gives the young hotshot many grim talkings-to. Meanwhile, team
owner Cameron Diaz, who inherited the Sharks from Daddy, wants
Tony to keep Willie on the field against Tony's (and pretty much
everyone else's) better judgment.
Pacino injects the movie with what little life it has -- getting
his voice up in his familiar airhorn bellow; pacing on the sidelines
like a dark-maned lion; giving many, many inspirational halftime
speeches for which Stone and co-writer John Logan should get
down on their knees and thank Pacino for selling so effectively.
James Woods is around, too, for about five minutes total; he
plays an unscrupulous team doctor who just squirts the players
with whatever drugs they need to keep going, and he performs
the same function on the movie in his few scenes. But then he's
fired, to be replaced by an atypically dull Matthew Modine as
a younger and more idealistic doctor whose crises of conscience
amount to nothing.
I think you'd have to be a very undiscriminating football die-hard
to get anything out of Any Given Sunday. As drama, it's
dead in the water; as a football movie, it fails because Stone's
by-now-tiresome jumpy camera never lets you see what's going
on in any of the games. The editing whizbang here makes Natural
Born Killers look like Barry Lyndon; the movie should
be called Any Given Shot. Stone jacks up the fake excitement
with lots of punishing techno and rock-rap music, as if trying
to jolt us awake (I nodded off several times anyway). The football
sequences play like hyperactive commercials for a PlayStation
football game. The style combines incoherence and aggression,
a deadly mix.
Why did Oliver Stone want to do this movie? Maybe, at age 53,
he's feeling his oats and wanted to dive headfirst into a revivifying
pool of testosterone -- a king-hell Guy Movie (they should pump
aftershave fumes into the theater to make the experience complete),
where men are men and women are either scolds, whores, or bitches.
(Stone has seldom known how to portray women, but Any Given
Sunday is real neanderthal time.) The movie may be a sort
of cinematic dose of Viagra for Stone -- he's trying to prove
he can keep pounding harder and longer than anyone. I think he
also sees himself as a cross between the beleaguered coach Tony
and the agonized old quarterback played by Dennis Quaid. He may
consider himself a man's man drowning in a world of young man's
rules, and flailing frantically to stay afloat. It's as exhausting
for us as it must be for him. The best football movie -- North
Dallas Forty, a powerful example of everything this movie
isn't -- came in at 119 minutes. Someone should have told Stone
he could make a decent football movie at under two hours and
still be considered macho. Size doesn't matter, Oliver. |