ANY GIVEN SUNDAY
STARRING: Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, Dennis Quaid, James Woods, Cameron Diaz DIRECTOR: Oliver Stone WRITTEN BY: John Logan, Oliver Stone, Rob Huizenga (novel), Pat Toomay (novel)
The worlds of professional sports and movies are very similar in a lot of ways: both involve spending vast sums of money for the sake of entertainment; both bring adoration and fame to highly paid, instantly recognizable stars, and both feature central figures upon whom all the pressure rests. When they succeed, they are respected and admired, sometimes even immortalized. When they fail, they shoulder the blame and often lose their jobs. Whether you call them 'directors' or 'coaches,' their lives are usually summed up, rightly or wrongly, in terms of their work. Which brings us to Tony D'Amato, the fictional football coach and central character in nonfictional director Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday. It's not hard to see why the beleaguered Stone wanted to do a film about a guy whose passion remains firm despite being second-guessed, criticized, and told he's washed up. It's this passion, both D'Amato's and Stone's, that makes the film worth watching.
D'Amato (Pacino, looking a bit like Pat Riley after a huge loss) is the coach of the Miami Sharks, a team whose four-game losing skid is compounded by the injury of star quarterback Jack "Cap" Rooney (Quaid) just as the playoffs are approaching. Luckily, third-stringer Willie Beamen (former sitcom star Foxx) is an undiscovered talent, and he gives the team a much-needed boost in the late season. Not so luckily, he's as mouthy as he is talented, and his public remarks about the team and particularly D'Amato quickly cause friction as his fame increases. To make D'Amato's problems worse, he's got to deal with ice-cold Christina Pagniacci (Diaz, attacking the role with unsmiling relish), the win-at-any-cost owner who has inherited the Sharks from her father. To her, the players-- and coach-- are mere stocks to be traded away when their value shows signs of diminishing. Then there's team doctor Harvey Mandrake (Woods, in fine snarky form), who uses the players' willingness to sacrifice their bodies as justification for his lack of medical ethics. Worst of all is sportswriter Jack Rose (Stone film regular John C. McGinley), who attacks D'Amato relentlessly in print and on TV. If there were any lingering doubts as to Stone's opinion of critics, they can now be safely put to rest.
None of these characters are particularly original, and the football games that drive the plot are no less predictable in their melodramatic, down-to-the-wire outcomes than any other standard sports-movie fare. This is not to say that the games aren't exciting to watch. The camera pans in blurry zigzags and quick shots of bodies in motion; linebackers crouch like hunting tigers, stalking their quarterback prey. The hits are huge, bone-crunching affairs punctuated by loud, beat-heavy music. What really makes Any Given Sunday work, though, are the characteristic Stone touches: his fascinating depiction of the machinations behind the scenes, his lengthy scenes of charged dialogue, and especially his moralistic approach to the effect of television and big money on athletes, coaches, and the game itself. Football players have often been called modern gladiators; Stone takes the metaphor one step further, using the famous Ben-Hur chariot race to make his point. Like the hapless charioteers who fall and are crushed by their onrushing rivals, today's pro football players are slaves to the spectacle, meat for the grinder of televised entertainment. The only thing the highlight reels crave more than a Hail Mary pass, Stone points out, is footage of a player puking or a blown knee. Even more than Quaid's aging star quarterback, the tragedy of this fate is embodied in the character of Luther "Shark" Lavay, who is willing to literally risk his life for his performance bonus. Former New York Giants great Lawrence Taylor gives the role a naturalness and depth of feeling that could only have come from living it.
Any Given Sunday is both a nostalgic remembrance of professional football's storied history, and an ultimately optimistic look at how today's game relates to that tradition. It may be bigger, richer, and more slick than ever before, but the love of the game is still the most important thing. In that, the worlds of sports and movies are very similar indeed.
GRADE: ***
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