ANY GIVEN SUNDAY

The game of American Football is, in many ways, a perfect movie sport. First of all, the game progresses in fits and starts, giving plenty of opportunity for dramatic buildup and suspense. Second, the offence and the defense take turns on the playing field, allowing the filmmakers to cut away to active players on the sidelines. Third, and probably most important, football is a sport that closely resembles an ancient battlefield; tight formations of armored men violently advancing and retrieving. This has been the stock and trade of action cinema from Birth Of A Nation to Braveheart.

Oliver Stone’s ANY GIVEN SUNDAY is certainly an action film. It throws you right on the field in the very first sequence and keeps you there for a good forty minutes of it’s near 3 hours. Yet somehow, you get very little feeling for how the game is actually played. Sure, there’s the controlled chaos, the violent hits, and the occasionally acrobatic intensity of the running game… but the game is somehow lost. Too bad because all the elements seem to be there.

Al Pacino plays Tony D’Amato, a legendary head coach of the Miami Sharks. James Woods sinks his sharp little teeth into the team’s sleazbag doctor. And Cameron Diaz, somewhat against type, is the bitch-on-wheels team owner. On top of that there’s quarterbacks Jamie Foxx and Dennis Quade, Jim Brown, L.L. Cool J, Matthew Modine, and Ann-Margaret in a wonderful cameo. Oliver Stone is the ringmaster, and who could be a better choice? Someone who’s both played the game (in college) as well as seen the battlefield (in Viet Nam). ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, unfortunately, is somewhat less than the sum of its parts; failing to live up to its promise as the “ultimate football film”.

Now, don’t get me wrong, ANY GIVEN SUNDAY is full of fun touches. The performances are uniformly terrific and the action is often spectacular. But the film gets so caught up in cliché that it gets difficult to take by the time it’s over. Of course, all sports films rely on a certain amount of cliché; it’s really just a part of the package. But do we need to see all of the sports film cliches packed into one film? There’s the over-the-hill quarterback looking for one more shot, the young star learning how to be a team player, the evil money-grubbing owner who doesn’t give a damn about the players or the integrity of the game, and the idealistic coach trying to hold the team together and to take them to the playoffs, etc, etc, etc.. All this, as always, culminates in the “big game” finale that miraculously solves all dilemmas and resolves all conflicts. The film’s biggest surprise (such as it is) comes over the closing credits, by which time I couldn’t care less.

Here’s a couple more small gripes. One: all through the film everyone is referring to Coach D’Amato as an “old dinosaur”. Huh? Who are they talking about? Pacino looks great, not a day over fifty! Compared to some of the geriatric geezers coaching in the NFL now, he’s a youngster. Two: not a single field goal is kicked in the entire three hours. Come on! Show one field goal! Just one. How hard is that? Otherwise the European audiences won’t understand why the game is called “football”.