Epic, sprawling exploration of America's true pastime.

Rating: Null/10 (10 January 2000)

"Any Given Sunday" has a far-reaching ambition (nothing Oliver Stone does is ever lacking in ambition). In its attempt to unravel the game of football, in its exploration of the game from the field, the sidelines, and the offices, it says much more about the fans of the game than it does about the game itself. The pressures that the players feel is real, much more pronounced here than it was in "Jerry Maguire." We (the fans) put these players into positions where the game is not as important as the endorsements, the behind-the-scenes wrangling. The crowd sows the seeds of the very corruption of the game it watches. The players thus put on a performance not only to the crowd, but also to the dollars that the crowd is willing to spend. The film criticizes the crossroads that the sport sits on, where competition for dollars corrupts the pure competition espoused by the quote at the beginning of the film.
Given that the game's very point is entertainment for the crowd, it is ironic that in the film, the only time characters are able to pull off big plays is when they completely shut out the audience around them -- Coach D'Amato (Al Pacino) tells Willie Beaman (Jamie Foxx) at the film's beginning to focus on the game at hand, to forget everything and remember back when the game was played "in the hood." It's the inability to forget the crowd that leads to Foxx's perpetual vomiting; when "Cap" Rooney (Dennis Quaid) goes down, we watch him disappear into the crowd's faces; and it's the desire to perform for the crowd that leads to the rampant egos we see throughout the film, as well as the moral ambiguity of many of the characters (Dr. Mandrake -- played by James Woods -- especially, but not exclusively, as Matthew Modine's character faces a similar moral dilemma, and we are not sure what his final action is).
The film frequently uses the shot of fading into the crowd's faces -- the players lose themselves in the crowd they are playing to, and collapse. Each character's moral barometer is based on his/her willingness to play to the crowd; when Cap, the moral component of the old guard, collapses physically, after losing himself in the crowd, it is a sign of the fate that befalls each character internally. Whether morally or physically, each character loses themselves in the crowd, not in the game -- and it's only when they take themselves out, when they step out, that they are able to come to grips with why they are doing what they're doing. Cap takes himself out of the game -- Willie is taken out -- at the end, Pacino takes himself out -- and it is only when this happens, that they are able to deal with the motivations that drive them forward. WHY they play the game and live the lives they do.
The film's intensity and length is necessary in order to fully invest ourselves in the lives of these characters. Unless we feel the intensity they do on the field (which Stone accomplishes through a pumped-up soundtrack, quick cuts and flash shots), unless we see the sordid underside of the game (Pacino consorts with a prostitute, his owners undermine his decisions, the team is rife with tensions, both racial -- note the sequence in the locker room with combating music -- and personal), we have no idea about the lives they lead. Stone's point is not to criticize the game or its players -- it's just another component to American life, just as is the financial district of "Wall Street", the music of "The Doors," and the political worlds of "JFK" and "Nixon." Stone's desire is instead to hold up a window for our consideration -- this is a world we fund, a world we want to see on Monday Night Football, and these are the men and the women we call "heroes." Stone shows us the pressures they are under to perform. He does not present them as woeful cry-babies -- they are given a job to do, and are expected to do it. But the film considers the cost and the price of fame -- and asks us to consider the fact that, in our quest to set up heroes (only to forget them when their playing years are up), we are sacrificing both the souls of these men, and our own. Our ethos is, "it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." Yet we remember only the winners; the losers go home physically and emotionally ruined. We are each faces in the crowd -- and even in the film's climactic scene, the film audience becomes a football one, rooting for our "heroes." Stone puts us into the position of the crowd in the film... and then wonders if we should enjoy being there.