Pompous

Rating: Null/10 (19 November 2004)

Any Given Sunday has to be the most pompous and overblown sports movie ever made. Dripping with emotion and full of slow-motion shots and overly long speeches about the honor in fighting the good fight, winning and losing. Having said that, i found the movie to be entertaining and one of the better sports movies i've seen!
The story is pretty straight-forward. The run-down Football-coach D'Amato (Al Pacino) has trouble with just about everything. His wife left him, he has pressure coming from all sides. From the hard-to-control players, from the team owner (a beautiful and sinister Cameron Diaz) and from the relentless media always willing to pick on him. So the question is, can he keep the team together and prove his aging tactics can still win?
This movie has Oliver Stone written all over it. The overblown music, the heroic themes and the slow-motion. I would call this porno for Football-fans. It's Oliver Stones salute to the athlete as the modern-day Gladiator, the fighter who never backs down. But then again, it's also a look into a sports world where everything is about money. A sports world where athletes run down the field pumped up with drugs, knowing that the next tackle could cost them their life. Just one more game, just one more until they get the bonus...
So, what makes this rise above the (admittedly mediocre) run of sports movies that have come out previously? Well, first of all "Any Given Sunday" is stylish in a way that few sports movies are. Hell, they even manage to make the Football games look interesting, and the only sport that bores me more than American Football is Baseball! Also, it's quite shameless in it's admiration of the athletes. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Many people will find this a bit too muscular and testosterone-filled. And admittedly it's not for everyone. But i prefer this to another "aging-athlete-succeeds"-movie starring Kevin Costner ANY given Sunday (or any other day of the week for that matter). This is grand entertainment, and sometimes that's all you need. I rate it 6/10.