pumped-up but cliched film

Rating: Null/10 (9 September 2000)

Unlike `Jerry Maguire,' which found a way to appeal to a broad segment of the movie going public, Oliver Stone's `Any Given Sunday' pretty much requires that one be a hardcore aficionado of professional football to really appreciate it. Stone and co-writer John Logan deserve credit for attempting to create a comprehensive panoramic view of the sport, warts and all. For example, they don't shy away from portraying the drug abuse and shady medical practices that run rampant both in the locker room and out. Nor do they minimize the detrimental effect that has come about as professional football has become more and more about obscenely huge salaries, product endorsements and individual stardom and less and less about the values of winning and sticking together as a team.
Unfortunately, the canvas becomes simply too broad to keep all this profundity in focus. For every sharp psychological insight into the people and values that comprise this sport/industry, the film provides half a dozen hoary clichés, stock characters and predictable plot turns that consistently undercut those quality elements. Al Pacino plays the typical aging coach who, as his losing team begins to become the laughingstock of the league, must decide whether to bow to corporate pressure and remove the injured, aging quarterback (Dennis Quaid) or stay true to his ideals and demonstrate loyalty to his players. Cameron Diaz plays Pacino's major foil as the hard-driven team owner whose only motivating factor seems to be the Almighty Buck. By making this character a beautiful woman, the authors get to play it both ways: they satisfy the feminists by showing that a woman can be just as ruthless and cutthroat as any man in a position of decision-making power, yet, by making her so evil, they also placate all those men who have been smugly assuring us for years that `professional football is no place for a woman.' (The filmmakers even have her cry in a few places). Around these two main antagonists swirl a dozen or so equally stereotypical characters including the nefarious team doctor (James Wood, in yet another of his one-dimensional villain roles), whose shameless disregard for the health of the players is set in obvious counterpoint to the righteous young intern (Matthew Modine) who is frankly shocked at this senior doctor's cavalier indifference to the Hippocratic Oath. LL Cool J has a minimal and undeveloped role as a cocaine-sniffing rival to the upstart young quarterback (Jamie Foxx) whose lack of understanding about the role team spirit plays in a winning strategy provides much of the driving force of the plot. Not only does Foxx give by far and away the finest, most intensely dramatic performance of the film, but also his character provides the few moments of really solid insightful drama in the entire movie. However, so intent are Logan and Stone in providing an upbeat ending to the film that they completely abandon the truths of this character and send him through a 180-degree conversion that is never adequately dramatized in the screenplay. He simply awakens one morning a new man, all ready to take his rightful place as a rah-rah team player. In fact, the neat way in which all the characters and loose plot ends somehow resolve themselves into the happiest possible outcome contradicts the tone of thoughtful seriousness the filmmakers have been trying to establish all throughout the film.
This soft final section of the film is not the only element that undercuts the verisimilitude of the story. For some reason, in a day and age in which Brand X has long since passed from the scene in the world of advertising and the most minor of sports films routinely use real life teams as focuses for their stories, Stone has opted to create not only a fictional franchise but a fictional league as well. Moreover, because the team allegedly hails from Florida, the entire season seems to be played under the glowing auspices of blazing sunshine and balmy tropical breezes. For a sport one associates with crisp fall weather and bone-chilling blizzards, this entire summer-like atmosphere seems a bit disconcerting.
As a director, Stone buries the drama under a flurry of MTV-like stylistic flourishes. Too cute by half, this pretentious directorial method merely serves as a device to distance us from the characters whose plights should be drawing us deeper into the film. In the middle of quietly dramatic scenes, Stone intercuts, in rapid succession, utterly irrelevant shots of lightning storms, roiling clouds and even snippets from the `Ben-Hur' chariot race (as a possible sop to Charlton Heston who makes a cameo appearance herein?). Similarly, the never-ending cacophony of blaring rap tunes cluttering up the soundtrack cannot cover up the essential emptiness of the film's characters and message. Stone has rarely seemed so transparent in his facile slickness. Even the football scenes are pumped-up beyond necessity. Part of the beauty of the sport lies in seeing the players' movements as all of a piece. In the visually fractured view that Stone accords us, he does not heighten our excitement and involvement, but rather diminishes them.
`Any Given Sunday' is definitely a long haul and it does offer a few moments of effective drama scattered along the way. But if you are going to devote 157 minutes to the subject of professional football, you might find that time better spent watching the real thing.