Probably win an MTV Music Award. . .

Rating: 5/10 (10 January 2000)

1999 wasn't a great year for the big-name directors with well-established presences; Lucas, Scorcese, and Kubrick at best disappointed and at worst seemed irrelevant. Oliver Stone fights the same fate like a gut-shot wolf snapping at his hunters. In Any Given Sunday, he dishes out MTV in spades, but it somehow feels so. . . 90s. A quick look at what David Fincher and David O. Russell served up in 1999 gives one the distinct impression that we're beyond all that. The new aesthetic may still involve clicking, but now it's with a mouse and a web browser, not a remote control. Also, the cut-and-paste music video style has been superceded (in the arena of sports, at least) by the omniscience of Sega or Sony gaming systems. Sure, Stone's whiz-bang style provides several hits of adrenaline, but it's all gland and no brain. The technology is there to explore every nuance of a play; why not take us through it like Scorcese took us through each cog and wheel of a casino? Instead, there's a lot of huffing about who gets to call the plays, the coach or the QB. Haven't we seen this before?
Which is all very far from saying that there is nothing to like about Any Given Sunday. Jamie Foxx took me in as the struggling third-string quarterback Beamen and Jim Brown's jaded assistant coach was quietly impressive. Both of them hold their own against the familiar, blustery Al Pacino as head coach D'Amato. Unlike many of Stone's critics, I can't slip easily into a tirade about his obsession with father figures, but I do wish Any Given Sunday had focused more on Beamen and his world instead of D'Amato and his machinations, just as I wish Nixon had been a film about any one of the thousands of Cambodians whose lives were destroyed instead of the man who destroyed them. Still, there are enough moments of brightness here to bring me back for his next film.