Sunday Entertains!

Rating: Null/10 (20 January 2004)

It's too easy to take pot shots at Oliver Stone, his filmmaking style, his excessive use of . . . well, pretty much everything. Criticisms of Stone's cliché's pretty much have become the realm of cliché themselves.

I've read a number of reviews by "sports fans" who hate this movie because they are "sports fans." I'm not buying it. I'm a sports fan (a fairly rabid one at that) and I loved this film, warts and all. Complaints of perceived non-linear storytelling don't matter to me in this type of movie. It's ALL about the Crash Boom! Anyone who's played professional sports (most of all NFL) will tell you the game today does closely resemble a video war game. From the initial drafting to the big business, high expectations, marketing frenzy and ownership/management chaos to player conceits, familial expectations, and tribulations both marital and extra marital, Stone's movie doesn't flinch. Climb on board, and you find yourself on an unrelenting, entertaining, frustrating, and ultimately exhilarating roller coaster ride that you can help disembarking from with a smile and a wink.

I'm not always (or often) a fan of Oliver Stone  but here, his chaotic, frenzied style, slamming camera angles, use of loud, percussive music and rap feel like life itself: fast, dangerous, sometimes predictable but often off kilter. His style serves a vision of the All American game as few others before him have. He here captures the feeling of the "business" of football with ferocious artistic integrity and vision, if not necessarily with the accuracy some fan's may wish. Frankly, I don't care for accuracy either historical or technical in film, my only demand is "entertain me." Any Given Sunday entertained. Wildly.