An jedem verdammten Sonntag

When Oliver Stone isn't flaunting wild conspiracy theories, he actually gets down to the business of making some really good films. And Any Given Sunday is definitely one of those.

It's a difficult perspective for me to write about this movie as my favorite spectator sport is baseball rather than football. But the business end of it is virtually the same. Curiously enough I was in Miami last week and saw the Florida Marlins home opener. They are going through some of the same dealings with the Miami city fathers about a new stadium that you see Cameron Diaz having with Clifton Davis in this film. There's a possibility that Miami will not have its major league baseball franchise soon.

Cameron Diaz is the young owner of the Miami Sharks professional football team who inherited it from her late father who is described as one of the prominent owners in the sport, a kind of combination of Wellington Mara and George Halas. Her father gave Coach Al Pacino complete latitude to deal with his players, but Cameron is taking George Steinbrenner as her role model.

Al Pacino joins the ranks of players who have done outstanding portrayals of athletic coaches. It's an honorable tradition going back to Pat O'Brien as Knute Rockne. I'm not sure how Rockne would have done in the era of seven figure salaries, but Pacino is adapting the best way he can.

When I was a kid in NYC in the fifties following our three major league baseball teams, one of the great constants was Casey Stengel winning that American League pennant for the New York Yankees with Yogi Berra behind the plate. The catcher's job is similar to the quarterback's in football in that he sees the whole game and actually sets the pace in calling the pitches. As Yogi's skills deteriorated over time, Casey could never quite pull the plug on him as the regular catcher. As a result, Elston Howard who would have been a regular on any other team never amassed the statistics that probably would have put him in the Hall of Fame.

Pacino has that kind of dilemma here. A veteran quarterback in Dennis Quaid and an up and coming talent in Jamie Fox. Quaid's skills are deteriorating, but he has the heart of a warrior which Pacino tells him in my favorite moment in the film. And the lesson Fox learns from Pacino and Quaid is that if the team doesn't respect you, you don't lead winners. And winning is the bottom line.

There are a whole lot of good performances here in minor roles, the hallmark of a great film. James Woods as the slimy team doctor, Ann-Margret as Cameron Diaz's mother, LL Cool J as a defensive lineman who may have taken one hit too many. And what a casting coup Oliver Stone pulled off in getting Charlton Heston for a small role as the football commissioner. Who better to run professional football than the guy who brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai.

I think even non-sports fans can appreciate this film.

Tony D'Amato(Al Pacino) is the head coach of the Miami Sharks who are owned by the Christina Pagniacci(Cameron Diaz) who is using the Miami Franchise only for profit. Trouble stirs up after long time star quarterback Cap Rooney(Dennis Quaid)is injured along with his back up bringing in third string quarterback Willie Beamen(Jamie Foxx) who becomes the face of the franchise after having great game after great game. The only problem is that he plays only with his head and not with his heart, with an aging team that needs an emotional leader to guide them to victory. Also Starring: James Woods, Matthew Modine, LL Cool J, Bill Bellemy, Lawrence Taylor, Charelton Heston, Aaron Eckhart, and John C. McGinley.

In a cinema that rarely produces pro football movies, this is the cream of the crop. It captures the reality along with the heroic story of a nobody rising to the top. The movie is humorous, dramatic, and a thriller for all sports fans.

This is not only one of Oliver Stone's best films but this is also the start of Jamie Foxx's "good" acting career. Forget what the critics said about Collateral or Ray being the beginning for Jamie Foxx. It was Any Given Sunday. Willie Beaman is a complex character and Foxx nailed the part. He was magnificent. He played the part to perfection and out shined the great Al Pacino. The supporting cast was also incredible with great performances from Cameron Diaz, LL Cool J, James Woods, and surprisingly John C. McGinley. It is very rare to find a great dramatic football movie but this is definitely one those small few.

Overall, this is one of the greatest sports movies of all time and it is highly enjoyable for adult audiences.

I highly recommend this movie.

I think the movie as a whole was excellent. Oliver Stone did a great job, I felt as though I was inside the screen. The almost 3 hours didn't even feel like it, it felt like watching a Football game on Any Given Sunday. Jamie Foxx did a great job, you loved him at times and hated him at times, and he gave you great reason to do either. And of course Al Pacino was the man as always, playing a coach with heart and blowing you away at the end. Cameron Diaz was the best wicked witch, just a hard-core display of a woman of the millenium. All in all, anyone who thinks this movie had no plot, wasn't paying attention. All you have to do is see the change in the characters throughout the movie, and what the game meant to each one of them: from the owner, to the coach, to the players, to the doctors, to the families. Perfect example is the characters of both Ann Margaret and Lauren Holly. There is a lot of meaning in this movie. Kudos!

I don't intend to add to the many positive comments about this movie. I agree with them. But from another perspective:

First, I have never been a football fan. However, any movie that combines Oliver Stone and Al Pacino has to get my interests. I loved it.

One thing that did impress me more than anything else was the quality of the sound design. The 3 dimensional noises in the huddle, on the line, from the grandstands; the growls and other sounds from the players; these things made the movie live and my blood boil. I was breathless.

Then these things interspersed with dead silences and slow motion dreamlike sequences gave the action a spiritual quality.

I stayed for the credits to see who had done this sound work and I think Wylie Stateman will get, at the very least, an Oscar nomination for sound design. If you ever wondered what this credit meant, see this movie and you will know. This movie would have lost a great deal of its punch without that sound designer's talent.

Oliver Stone is one of the most, if not THE most, passionate filmmakers working today. He's also a talented filmmaker, which a lot of people seem to forget. When both his talent and passion are at full strength, the results are impressive(SALVADOR, PLATOON, JFK, NIXON). When the passion is still there, but the talent is tripped up by his passion and ambitions, he makes flawed movies which are still powerful(WALL STREET, TALK RADIO, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, HEAVEN AND EARTH). But when he goes outside of his passions, for either experiments(NATURAL BORN KILLERS), or to make "mainstream" movies(U-TURN), he misses wide. NATURAL BORN KILLERS, to me, was a worse film, but U-TURN was, in a way, even more dispiriting, because the former you could at least excuse as an experiment gone wrong, whereas the latter screamed "Cash-in!" You felt after watching Stone was too tired to fight anymore.

Well, as ANY GIVEN SUNDAY proves, Stone, like his on-screen alter-ego, Tony D'Amato(Al Pacino), may look tired, but he's still got fight left in him. Many have seen football as war, so it's appropriate Stone has long wanted to make a movie about football. And as Spike Lee did with HE GOT GAME, Stone wants us to see not only the glory of the actual playing(as well as how tough it is to earn that glory), but also the corrupt forces which are pervading it today. After all, we decry flashy players, and then complain about those who are too boring, we talk about tradition out of one side of our mouth and demand the game be updated out of the other side, we call white players who exhibit boorish behavior "colorful" while calling black players who exhibit similar behavior "punks"(and that's putting it mildly), we complain about players who are overpaid while thinking nothing of owners who spend lavishly on themselves and move teams around, we complain about football being too dominated by TV yet sit around like couch potatoes every Sunday and Monday night, we react with horror when players get hurt badly and get addicted to drugs, yet we yell at them to murder each other on the field and call those who don't chicken(to put it mildly), and so on.

This is a wide canvas to cover, and yet Stone does a pretty good job of it. Especially good is how the relationship between D'Amato and his new quarterback Willie Beamon(Jamie Foxx) encompasses a lot of that canvas. There are two scenes in particular which stand out; one where D'Amato sits with Willie on the plane and tries to talk to him, but can't think of anything which doesn't sound patronizing from Willie's point of view(like music, where D'Amato thinks the fact he's mentioning black jazz musicians is supposed to mean something), and the scene at D'Amato's house, where Beamon talks of how, in the past, "playing for the team" was code for "Know your place, boy," and have things really changed? Willie has to learn that playing for the team really does mean, as quarterback, getting them to respect you so they'll play for you, and Tony has to learn that tradition can't be stodgy, that it has to accept change.

Stone is less sure in other aspects. Cameron Diaz does a good job as the team's owner, but her character is a little too one-dimensional at times. It would have been more interesting to have here not just talk in terms of money, but that the game, to her, really is more interesting the way Willie plays it(maybe I'm biased, but I'm a fan of more pass-oriented games). And while I don't think Stone is as misogynist as he's been charged with in the past, certainly it's evident here. It's one thing to say there are groupies in football, it's another thing to delight in showing them. There are sympathetic woman here, particularly Ann-Margaret as Diaz's mother, who shows what being a football wife costs, and Lela Rochon as Willie's girlfriend, who is unwilling to have that happen to her(the scene at the party, where she feels both isolated from Willie and the other wives, is nicely drawn). Finally, Stone can't resist the ROCKY-type cliches near the end.

But though it's flawed, there's still a lot of power here. Except for Lauren Holly, who I'm not a big fan of, the acting is all around excellent, particularly Foxx. I was particularly impressed with how well the athletes did as actors, particularly Jim Brown(though he's an actor, so this isn't surprising) and Lawrence Taylor. And, of course, all the football scenes are terrific and feel real. It's always good when you see on screen what you can't see watching the game on TV, and Stone accomplishes that here. Call it not quite a touchdown, but a film which convinces us Stone still has fight left in him.