DIRECTED BY: Oliver Stone WRITTEN BY: Oliver Stone, John Logan and Daniel Pyn
CAST: Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quide, James Woods, Jamie Coxx, Charlton Heston
Runtime: USA:112
-- RATING: 8/10
Life is a fierce competition. You are always racing forward, but no matter how good you are, there are always men that are younger than you, tougher than you, stronger than you, racing along side with you. Everyone of them is ready to push you aside, to kill, in order to come first. This time the subject is the brutal world of fictitious American football team the Miami Sharks. Possibly the most "Oliver-Stoney" Oliver Stone movie to date, Pacino essentially plays a hard-drinking football coach who must reverse the Sharks' losing streak, while the predictably underwritten ice maiden comes in the form of Diaz' ball-breaking club owner. But he starts questioning his own priorities. Is winning really the most important, or is it something else?
Comparing American Football to American life is an interesting idea and Oliver Stone is the natural choice. Here everything is in the open. The players stand against each other, ready to release all their energy into one single move. Ready to sacrifice themselves for a single moment of victory. It just takes a couple of seconds, and in that time, you either survive or go down. If you make your way forward, and come out alive, crawling on the bodies of your teammates, there is no end to your glory, until a better player comes along, and then you will be pushed to the ground, and be forgotten. They are the gladiators of our time. This is their arena and America is watching. But on any given Sunday, no matter how good you are, you'll either win or loose...
This is certainly Oliver Stone's (Platoon, Born the Fourth of July, Natural Born Killers) strangest film in some time. He has always been known as a bold director, unafraid to make his statement, no matter how risky or controversial it is. Nothing is subtle. Everything is in the open. He has proven to be a "man of the truth". And "Any Given Sunday" is drained in his most famous trademarks: the twisted cinematography, flashy editing, multidimensional sound. Yet, there is something about this film that somehow makes it worse than Stone's previous. It's not that I didn't enjoy it. I certainly did, but I do not quite know why. Maybe because I share Stone's fascination with American Football or maybe because of the film's incredible visual panache and solid acting. But if you ask me "what is this film about", I couldn't tell you. In all his past films , Stone was very careful to pose the questions in the right way and then energetically move towards a goal, making his way through unfamiliar territories. But here it seems as if he couldn't make up his mind. At first it seems as it is about the American society and the clever parallels to American Football. Then Stone starts criticizing the NFL, but in the end his love for the game takes complete control over the story, transforming it into a fancy filmed football game. It is a confused, but powerfully executed film that has its golden moments. Though the script isn't particularly well written, its holes are compensated by an amazing cast, that is capable of transforming any cliche into originality. Al Pacino, who looks incredible in any role, is magnificent here. It is much more Pacino's character than the scripts, since he goes further, deeper into the mind and heart of a coach that looses touch, faith in himself and life. Dennis Quide is very impressive as an on-field leader privately haunted by insecurity and Jamie Coxx is very nice, proving to be a serious and capable actor. Otherwise the film can boast of names such as Cameron Diaz, James Woods, LL Cool J, Charlt o
Some of it is incredible. And, in a way, Stone does the same with American Football as Spielberg did with WW2 in "Saving Private Ryan". The sense of "being there", not observe from above with the popcorn in one hand and a coke in another, but actually being on the field, look at it from the player's eyes, feel the adrenaline rushing through your body. Unfortunately these amazing sequences, no matter how great they are, are deluding us from the movie's actual objective. Stone gets lost amidst mirrors and smoke, and all the energy that is released during these two hours, is chanalized into nothing. In the end, no matter how noble the intentions, the film wrestles with its own shadow.
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