User reviews

Wild and outrageous, Any Given Sunday gives the viewer a glimpse into an athletic world not too far from the real thing. While some of the scenes were a little too over the top, it proved to be a very enjoyable experience. As a major football fan, I was disappointed in the fact the NFL did not allow Stone to use their logos and stadiums. Oh well, I seemed to enjoy the fictional league even better, even if some of the team uniforms were a dreadful. Jamie Fox portrayed Willie Beamon perfectly, epitomizing the selfish athlete with a cultured ease. While the speed of Beamon's rise proved to be a little too quick, the message in the rise and fall of stardom was more poignant than anything.

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.

Sports movies are tough to make. Creating the essence of the actual event is the toughest. Most films fall short in the editing process of the event or through sheer carelessness and lack of knowledge. ANY GIVEN SUNDAY is somewhat of an exception. It is hard-hitting and bloody like NORTH DALLAS FORTY. It is actually conventional when you think about it, like a warped RUDY. It is a hell of a lot more realistic than say, NECESSARY ROUGHNESS. These are all football films with varying degrees of success (except ROUGHNESS), but Oliver Stone, in his usual over the top way, throws a dizzying, mind-splitting film at us, much like the sport itself. This is why I liked it.

Oliver Stone began a wicked spell of filmmaking with JFK, evident in its editing style. Fast-paced, black and white mixed with color, documentary-like methods ensued in NATURAL BORN KILLERS, NIXON, and the ghastly U-TURN. Nothing is new here with ANY GIVEN SUNDAY. Football is a battlefield Stone chooses to depict and depict it he does. Even the most ardent fans of the sport do not really know what it is like for a quarterback to drop back and get rid of a piece of pigskin before 11 players maul him. You certainly get the idea watching this.

Al Pacino is the dried up head coach of the fictional Miami Sharks and he barks out the usual coaching cliches you hear in press conferences after real games. Pacino also seems to be sleep-walking through the picture. At times, he appears drunk even when he is not supposed to be. Cameron Diaz's character, a young chick owner, (yeah right) destroys any credibility the film may have had going in (Even the NFL would have nothing to do with this movie). Her constant bickering is so over-done, you almost feel like hurling much the way Jamie Foxx does every time he enters a game as the team's 3rd string quarterback. Realisticly speaking, this is not a very sane film about football. It is a maniacal celebration of the game. The scenes on the field are the ones I cherished. Beware of the locker room or domestic sequences.

No one has ever put such energy into football scenes in a film before. He definitely had some good consultants. There are some comical cameos - Johnny Unitas and Dick Butkus play opposing coaches. Lawrence Taylor can actually act a teeny bit and Jim Brown shares the film's best off the field scene with Pacino in a bar. Stone tries to show us how the game has changed. He resonates past glory with quotes from Lombardi, dissolves showing Red "the Galloping Ghost" Grange, and even Unitas handing off to Ameche. TV has changed everything, says the coach, and he is right. It seems to be all about the money nowadays.

That is the message, but you'll find yourself losing that idea in the lunacy of ANY GIVEN SUNDAY and the bone-crushing, ear-damaging football scenes. They are filmed and cut with such raw intensity, you feel like playing afterwards. This is definitely a film for football fans only unless you like big, sweaty men. Is there a big game at the end that needs to be won? Yes, and this surprised me considering how unconventional Stone usually is. Basically, surrender your senses and thought process to Stone's most entertaining film in quite some time.

RATING: ***

Any Given Sunday is one of Oliver Stone's most enjoyable movies. Sunday is pure entertainment, an action-packed spectacle that will delight even the most ardent sports enthusiast. Stone draws on the usual assortment of sports movie clichés, but he directs his actors, including Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, Dennis Quaid, and LL Cool J, into such passionate and intense performances, that the movie is able to transcend its familiar material. While its 160-minute running time is a bit of a detriment, AGS works overall as a superior piece of escapist entertainment. Also, the locker room scene, which showcases a confrontation between Cameron Diaz and a football player with a giant penis, is a classic.

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.

I thought what a great combo for "Any Given Sunday" - Oliver Stone and professional football -- excess meets its match.

So I grabbed a chance to go to the movies with my sons. They got a lot more out of the first and third thirds of the movie that are football games, which I couldn't follow at all, knowing zilch about football so I missed any references to significances of plays and strategies and didn't recognize the zillion football players past and present in bit parts, but I got other visual and music references they didn't.

The football field is explicitly a jungle, with the sounds like an elephant herd crashing. Of course Stone never says or shows once what he can get across 5 times, so the jungle fever point of the primalness of sports as a venue for male violence is accompanied by Native American chants, aboriginal and Asian Indian mystic strains as well. I don't know enough about rap to judge those selections -- I could tell there were lots of lyrics about "niggaz" working for The Man type of thing.

The second third should have appealed to me as that's when the huge ensemble has personal interactions and we learn all their selfish, dastardly, unpleasant motivations, but I was on sensory overload. Example: Al Pacino as the Old Guard Coach calls in Jamie Foxx as the suddenly first string quarterback (in a terrific performance), for a tête a tête on the pro's of Jazz over Rap, as a metaphor of the old football of finesse (what? all those flashbacks to black & white football games were of a subtle sport?). But when Foxx walks in Pacino has "Ben Hur" playing on a wide-screen TV. As if we didn't get the point Foxx actually says "The old gladiators, huh?" If we still didn't get the point the conversation keeps intercutting with the chariot race. And if we still didn't get the point of any reference in the conversation to racial issues then intercuts to the galley slave scenes from "Ben Hur" THEN on top of that, the NFL commissioner who puts the Bitch Owner in her place for trying to play with the Big Old Guys is none other than Charlton Heston.

No one just has a conversation -- everyone shouts, usually at the same time, so I had to close my eyes and I'm not sure if I missed something.

This is Sunbelt Football of expansion teams where the sport is not a Fall/Winter season - so the women were everywhere in tank tops, cleavage, midriffs bare and hips swinging, even Cameron Diaz as the Bitch Owner. Though all the women are really high priced prostitutes (even usually sweet Lauren Holly is a hardened cold Football Wife).

What I don't think I missed was Stone's outsize determination to ignore the homo-erotic aspects of male sports violence that "Fight Club" reveled in. Aw come on Stone, not a single gay player in the closet? He crowds the behemoths into locker rooms and showers that can barely contain their bodies--but he's so afraid of showing them in contact that he even at one point has one throw a baby alligator into the shower so they scatter.

Everyone is criticized-- including the sportscasters, which Stone revels in playing one (I think in general this movie is a show down between Stone and Spike Lee as it takes on more racial issues than he's done in the past). What a coincidence that ESPN is continually bad-mouthed when there's a big legible credit at the end to Turner Sports Network when this is a Time Warner movie and ESPN's a competitor.

Stone of course goes out of his way to link football with war, to fit into his oeuvre, with battle quotes from Vince Lombardi and some sort of link with Pacino's father dying in WWII that was irrelevant it seemed to me.

I think this is Dennis Quaid's at least third football movie and in the genre of such movies as "North Dallas 40," "Longest Yard," "Great American Hero," etc. and this joins that pantheon as a terrific football movie.

The music selections were by Robbie Robertson (with Paul Kelly but I'm not sure which Kelly that is) and he did as seamless a job as he's done for Martin Scorcese. The music credits at the end were impossible to read -- in 3 columns of a vertical font that was like watching the credits on TV - plus the movie continues under the credits so all those who bolted missed the ending.

Professional football deserves to be Oliver Stoned. But if I never saw any more football that'll be fine with me.

(originally written 12/27/1999)

Oliver Stone would have you believe that his Any Given Sunday is the most realistic film depiction of professional football, both on and off the field. On the field Stone does capture much of the excitement and passion which makes people love the sport. He also is probably reasonably accurate with much of his depiction of the off-field excesses of our modern-day gladiators. But both on and off the field he probably goes a little too far. He pushed it a little beyond the point of realism and believability. Modern professional football is a grand spectacle but perhaps Stone made it just a little too grand for this movie's good.

With Stone laying bare some brutal truths the NFL was never going to have anything to do with this movie. So the story follows the fictional Miami Sharks of the fictional AFFA. Their veteran coach Tony D'Amato has had a distinguished career but has the game passed him by? The team's owner certainly thinks so. Oh, by the way that owner, Christina Pagniacci, is played by Cameron Diaz. Cameron Diaz owns a football team? OK then. Well, it turns out daddy died and left his daughter the team. And Christina is no shrinking violet. She is driven and determined. Which is a nice way of saying she's a bitch. When she isn't making her coach's life miserable she's trying to blackmail Miami's mayor for a new stadium. She thinks she's in control but does anyone really respect her? The answer to that question may well disappoint her. Meanwhile his raving shrew of an owner is far from Tony's only problem. In the first game we see the Sharks lose their star veteran quarterback to injury. And then lose his backup. Enter Willie Beamen. And all hell breaks loose.

In no time at all Beamen goes from anonymous third-string quarterback to superstar. Really, I mean no time at all. Sorry Mr. Stone but I don't care how well you play you don't go from complete unknown to having your own rap video and your picture on the side of every bus in town in two weeks. Just one clear instance of the movie not really ringing true. Anyhow, Beamen's winning games and exciting fans but he's driving his coach and teammates nuts. He ignores the coach, makes up his own plays, does it all his way. And despite his success he ends up tearing his team apart. The coach sees this happening and tries to rein Beamen in but it's a futile effort. Especially when the owner doesn't back the coach. The Sharks are now winning games but there's conflict all over the place. Everyone's got their own agenda. The owner, the coach, the players, the doctors, everyone's pulling in their own direction. This seems destined for a spectacular blowup.

Stone has a great ensemble cast but there are two roles clearly more important than the rest. The movie is at its heart about two men, Coach Tony D'Amato and "Steamin" Willie Beamen. Al Pacino plays the coach and is as good as you would expect. A little over the top in some moments but the whole movie goes a little over the top in many moments. And Pacino is very good in the quieter moments such as heart-to-hearts with his two quarterbacks, the aging star and the young hotshot. Speaking of that young hotshot Jamie Foxx plays Beamen and captures all the character's excesses wonderfully while also conveying the hurt and frustration of a guy who never felt he was given a fair shot in football or in life. It's Pacino and Foxx who really have to carry the movie and they do a very good job of it. But they have plenty of support. Diaz is surprisingly effective in a role which certainly does not seem tailor-made for her. Dennis Quaid, James Woods, Matthew Modine, Aaron Eckhart, Ann-Margret...the list goes on and on. Notable performers who all add something to the film. There's also room for real-life football stars. Jim Brown we already knew could act. Lawrence Taylor is a pleasant surprise. He plays an old, broken-down linebacker facing the end of his career and his own personal demons. So basically, LT's playing himself. And he handles that very well.

So the cast is generally excellent and the story's entertaining enough so why is there the nagging sense that the movie's not quite as good as it could have been? One problem is the football action. Stone takes you right onto the field, capturing the sound and fury. But he goes too far. Realism takes a back seat as we're presented with a lot of rather cartoonish football, guys doing full-twisting double somersaults into the end zone and such. The game is exciting enough as is, Stone didn't need to crank it up past the point of truth. And a lot of the off the field stuff goes a little too far as well. There's a lot of craziness and excess. Our on-field warriors are wild men off the field. A little too wild at times to take the movie seriously. And then there's the central plot point, Beamen's rise to instant superstardom. The media makes stars quickly but not that quickly. It's just not really believable. Coach D'Amato tells us football is a game of grabbing that last inch. Any Given Sunday comes close but when we stretch out the chains it comes up just that inch short.

"Any Given Sunday" is a movie about pro football and it's directed by Oliver Stone. It's an unusual topic for Stone, that's for sure...but he handles it well.

The film is about a pro team, the Miami Sharks. The team is good but struggling lately. However, an end to their doldrums appears in the form of their third-string quarterback (Jamie Foxx). However, this quarterback also has the distinction of rubbing his teammates the wrong way, as his ego is definitely an issue. Will they make it to the playoffs after all?

The film is sort of like a behind the scene look at football...warts and all. I appreciate how the film talks about debilitating injjuries and head trauma, though it's incredibly ironic that the player who is particularly struggling with this is played by Lawrence Taylor, as guy who in real life seems like the poster child for Chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

All in all, very well made and worth seeing. My only complaint is that the film is in some ways quite predictable...though well acted.

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.

Having dealt with various politically charged topics in movies, Oliver Stone looked at pro football in "Any Given Sunday". Set in Miami, Al Pacino is as intense as ever playing coach Tony D'Amato, near the end of his rope. Throughout the movie, there are many games (and conflicts related thereto), a lot of people get seriously injured (physically and emotionally), and other such things. But through thick and thin, everyone has to get on with their lives somehow.

I must say that the movie pulls no punches (note: there are no conspiracy theories here). Cameron Diaz shows that she can do a serious, gritty role here as Christina Pagniacci, who may be considering taking over the team. Maybe this isn't Stone's best movie, but it is a good, scathing look at a typically American sport. Why do we even call it football when we don't play it with our feet? Also starring Dennis Quaid, James Woods, Jamie Foxx, LL Cool J, Matthew Modine, Jim Brown, Ann-Margaret, Aaron Eckhart and Charlton Heston. As a joke, I'll translate the cast into their most famous roles/images: Michael Corleone, The Mask's love interest, the "Far from Heaven" husband, a September 12th Republican, Ray Charles, a rapper, Pvt. Joker from "Full Metal Jacket", Mr. Blaxploitation, a 1960s sex kitten, a tobacco industry spin doctor, and Moses.

And to what can we attribute the fact that left-wing conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone and right-wing gun lover Charlton Heston collaborated on a movie? Maybe that they both caught some flak after Columbine (Stone directed "Natural Born Killers" and Heston held a pro-NRA rally).

Any Given Sunday (1999)

Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, LL Cool J, James Woods, Matthew Modine, Lawrence Taylor, Jim Brown, John C. McGinley, Aaron Eckhart, Charlton Heston, Oliver Stone, Elizabeth Berkley. Directed by Oliver Stone. Spoilers herein.

"Any Given Sunday" is a film that is a feast for the eyes, but not the mind. Stone does a great job for creating a dizzying direction, eye-opening visuals, and extremely loud sound, and he does all of this with the 2 and a half+ hours that he has to spare with the film but never does go deep into detail on the characters.

The story consists of a professional football team struggling with their season. The film opens with a quote from football legend Vince Lombardi, and then fades into a football game, where the starting quarterback for the Sharks, Jack Rooney is hurt in the middle of a game, unknown third string quarterback Willie Beaman is sent in for the rest of the season. As Beaman starts rising to fame, aging Coach D'Amato and Rooney begin to question if Beaman is worth risking the rest of the season and their chance for the championship as he is trying to make the team win by himself.

The performances are pretty good and powerful. Al Pacino and Jamie Foxx do great with the lead characters, and other familiar faces such as Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, James Woods, LL Cool J, Matthew Modine and John C. McGinley in the supporting performances.

One thing I did really like about "Any Given Sunday" is how the action during the games is very realistic, gritty, and fast. It ultimately captures the intensity and hard work from the sport of Football. But like "Natural Born Killers" and "U Turn", the sound is so unbearably loud and images are so fast and dizzying that the film could give some viewers a headache. Stone has been known to cause controversy among his films, and this is a way that he seems to do it, but it didn't bother me so much as haters of the film. Despite of some of the strengths, "Any Given Sunday" does have a few flaws. The film is unnecessarily overlong, overly stylish, and underdeveloped. Stone really could have made the film about 20-30 minutes shorter, and with most of the time the characters are either playing on the game field or yelling at each other. Some scenes showing Willie's rise are no more interesting than a Nike Gridiron commercial or a Michael Bay film. Another thing Stone forgets to do is add emotion to the film, and he replaces that with mostly sports action.

Overall I really did enjoy this film a lot, for it's realistic football scenes and the living hell that the players go through in order to win. But at times it really does try too hard, especially when it's absent with a great script and follows clichés of older Football (or even gladiator) films. But I would recommend it to Stone fans and football fans especially. A very considerate 4 stars out of 5.

Despite it's many (and I mean many) flaws... very few sports film show the dark side of sports entertainment the way Any Given Sunday does. It's raw, real and showcases what the fans don't get to see when the game and post game interviews end. There's some bizarre editing choices throughout, splicing hip hop with tribal tones and thunder crackling with the grunts and moans of the grid iron warriors which can miss the mark and come off as hokey. Nevertheless, Any Given Sunday delivers a great ride for any football lover.

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!

When you look at the cast of this film. You realize that had it been expertly directed It could have been really great. The biggest problem with the film was Stone's insistence on using frantic cinematography, and frantic editing in order to give you a sense of the intensity of the game. What it ends up doing is just giving you this rather incomprehensible mishmash. As a viewer you barely know what's going on. At any given moment, much less any given Sunday. It's a decent film considering the fact that Stone hasn't done much good work for the last two decades. It's, you know, probably up there with Alexander, an maybe Nixon in terms of decent work. It's passable entertainment, that is about as far it's about as I would go.

Every American Football cliché and issue and moment of heroism is thrown together in one bone crunching tackle of a movie. This is one fired up, drug enhanced super financed player of a movie. This is the touchdown! The games are played in a confused and confusing maelstrom of noise and sound. The players are larger than life both off and on the field. At no time do we see the crack in the war-paint. This is a full on movie. Compelling, exciting and completely daft. Failing miserably at the same time as succeeding heroically. Thoroughly enjoyable!

I really like Oliver Stone's movies and I have nothing against football, but this movie didn't really work for me. It was so loud and so frenetic, yet it didn't really hide that there was nothing much going on except the usual sports-movie hijinks. I expect more of Oliver Stone, and he usually delivers. The characters aren't sympathetic, but at the same time you can't really hate them. Yeah, they're all self-centered, but you can hardly blame them for trying to keep their own butts covered, given the people they're surrounded by. 'Sharks' was a fitting team name here. If this movie has a point, it's simply a portrait of the thirst for money and power that abounds in pro sports. That's what all of these characters are after, one way or another. Even the characters that should be likable- like Dennis Quaid's- come off as desperate and greedy. I suppose Al Pacino's character was supposed to be 'our hero'- after all, are old, white, male football coaches ever supposed to be anything but noble?- but I found him a good deal more distasteful even that the characters played by Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx, both of whom I suspect I was supposed to dislike, either a lot- Christina- or a little- Willie. She, supposedly, would 'eat her young' for being a tough team-owner trying to make her franchise work, and he's a jerk for trying to look after himself in a world that certainly isn't going to look after him on his behalf. On the positive side of things, the performances- one and all- were terrific. This was really a good ensemble cast, and they all seemed to have latched onto their characters and realized that the selfishness inherent in every one of them is both loathsome and understandable. I give praise to the actors and the realistic portrayal of pro-football injuries, stress, and excess, but this movie quite simply collapses under the weight of it's own artifice. It's a heavy, slick veneer over a shell of a film that is, essentially, empty.

Let me start by saying that i dont like or even understand american football and i personally think it does not come close to soccer but with this film it did not matter a jot. Oliver Stone had directed a film here that crosses all bounderies. You dont have to like the sport or understand it to appreciate how brilliant this film is. It is shot so well ,it makes you fell you are in the game and as for the soundtrack well that just adds to a mesmerising showpiece. Stars such as Al Pacino, Dennis Quaid,James Woods and Cameron Diaz star but for me the real Star of this film is James Foxx who plays the Quaterback who begins to believe his own hype but ultimately understands that it the team that matters. One of the test of a good film is that if you start to look at the clock throughout the film is usually means its not good , this film lasted 2 and a half hours and i never looked at the time. Brilliant. 9 out of 10.

What a disappointment. Oliver Stone, Al Pacino and football. What a great movie THAT should be. "Should be" doesn't mean "IS", however. Unfortunately, Stone's flashy (and yes, impressive) shots of the the game are not enough to solidify this unfocused movie. The movie is wrought with too many music-videos and shallow characters to whom we cannot relate. If Stone wanted to make "Rudy part II" he should have concentrated more on the characters, and if he was looking for "MTV does the NFL" he shouldn't have wasted our time even introducing half of the characters. But he ends up in the middle here, with a mish-mash of football-music-videos and underdeveloped characters who have mysterious and quick attitude changes just in time to win a playoff game. The greatest let-down is that the great rebel Oliver Stone sells out and gives us a Rudy ending, without making us care for anyone like we cared about Rudy. Of course we have lots of sentimentality about the past, sure. You want to talk about the past, Mr. Stone? Remember Platoon and JFK? I do.

As far as I'm concerned, Oliver Stone has quite a mixed body of work. "Platoon" was definitely Oscar worthy, but then there was the conspiracy theory nonsense of "JFK" and the over the top violence of "Natural Born Killers". But Stone puts in a solid effort with this film, a movie that both pays homage to and takes a critical look at the world of professional football.

The plot itself is fairly conventional. It's basically relating the never-ending conflict between youth and maturity. On the one side, you've got experience, tradition, and loyalty, on the other, energy, innovation, and self interest. Representing the former are Al Pacino, as the coach of the Miami Sharks and their veteran quarterback, Jack 'Cap' Rooney, played by Dennis Quaid. The `young guns' consist of Cameron Diaz, a hot yet cold-blooded blonde who has inherited the team from her father, and the equally hot backup QB, Willie Beamon, (Jamie Foxx) who takes over the starting spot after Rooney gets sidelined by an injury. And, despite some great football action footage, the most memorable scenes are those which show the essential conflicts between these two forces, most notably when Pacino and Foxx turn a lunch meeting into a no holds barred verbal brawl, and when Pacino and Diaz face off over who, and more importantly, whose values, will guide the team. In addition, there's a nicely developed side issue, a conflict between the team's doctors, one an old cynic, played by James Woods, who lies to his players about the severity of their injuries in order to keep their morale (and the team's cash flow) up, and the other a youngster who still retains his ideals and basic decency. In these scenes, Stone delivers first-rate acting and interpersonal drama at its best.

In short, what makes this movie work is that Oliver Stone, while using his film to address larger social issues, nonetheless focuses first and foremost on telling a really good story. All the key actors are allowed to portray fully three-dimensional characters. We can relate to Pacino as the `old school' coach, a man who used to settle contract issues with Diaz's father over a beer and a handshake, Quaid as the legend who must nonetheless face both his age and his injuries, Foxx as the young hotshot with an attitude and a chip on his shoulder, and finally Diaz, who, despite being quite the icy bitch, also represents the business realities of modern day sports. There's also fine work by the supporting actors, most notably Jim Brown as an assistant coach, who reminisces about the `old days' when players had to sell used cars in the off season just to make ends meet. On the one hand, we can see how modern players are finally getting their fair slice of the financial pie, yet at the same time mourn the loss of team loyalty and the purity of playing for the sake of the game instead of for the next contract negotiation.

9/10

An interesting perspective of what happens behind the scenes in professional sports. It's definitely a more edgy and hard outlook and it's entertaining to watch. It does suffer from an overall structure standpoint and is too long but still a solid watch.

There's no way this film has ever been anything less than a 10. From the first time I watched it in 1999 to tonight in 2019. Pacino is amazing, the script and direction is amazing. Soundtrack amazing. Supporting cast (Diaz, ll cool j, foxx, woods, modine, mcginley, etc etc etc) amazing. And the speech, if you don't know it even without having seen the film then you are neither a sports or motivational speech fan

Another lame attempt to make a movie "gritty" and "thought provoking"- whatever the hell that means. They have Al Pacino say a lot of words like - "Television killed football." Yeah whatever. This is another movie that showcases Oliver Stone's Delusions of Grandeur. If Stone is trying to show us that football will be our downfall or something, why does he insist on romanticizing the sport with his stilted camera movements and Kid Rock songs? He even throws Cameron Diaz into the fray for purely aesthetic reasons. It's a shame that Diaz and Pacino have to meet in a movie that is so bad.

Ever since "Scent of Woman," writers and directors have used Pacino to romanticize their pathetic lines. His characters are nothing more than loudspeakers - their voices covering up what would normally be redundant and trite. He needs to reinvent himself, showing how he can act without yelling. He has to stop feeling sorry for hokey scripts with cheesy lessons like "Organized football is messed up," and act out a good story.