Overrated, self-important film

Rating: Null/10 (16 August 2001)

Warning: may contain spoilers.
When I saw the preview for this movie, it gave the impression that the film would be some cutting-edge expose of the way that evil corporate greed is threatening the future of one of America's best-loved sports. What it instead turned out to be was a rather lame movie about some struggling gridiron team's attempts to reverse its rather pitiful performance and save itself from extinction. Then again, from what I've heard, Oliver Stone seems to have a rather notorious reputation for vastly overinflating the importance and significance of his cinematographic creations (just look at "Platoon" and "Natural Born Killers").
Basically, "Any Given Sunday" seems to consist of little more than an endless succession of football games as the team we're all supposed to cheer for (the presumably fictitious Miami Sharks) takes on everyone else in the competition and tries to whip their asses. There's also a bit of off-field politics: much of it involving Cameron Diaz's character. Although she's supposed to be a real bitch, I didn't consider her particularly evil; all she seemed to be doing was trying to run the Miami Sharks as a sound business. Far more disturbing, and truly worthy of the title of BITCH, was the wife of Dennis Quaid's character. The last individual wants to quit football because he's getting too old and racking up too many injuries, yet his selfish cow of a wife refuses to let him. Not only that, but when he gets in an argument with her over it, the bitch actually slaps him! If the roles were reversed, everyone would be jumping up and down and screaming domestic violence, but presumably, because she's a woman, it's OK for her to lash out at her spouse like a spoilt little child who can't get its own way.
Another big gripe that I had with this movie concerned an injury shown in the final game. Was it REALLY necessary for some guy to get one of his eyeballs ripped out in that? Ugh, it makes me nauseous just thinking about it!
In summary, this was really nothing more than just another football movie: one with no real surprises in it. Not TOO bad if you like that sort of thing but don't expect anything deeper from it.