this movie is fourth and long with a bad snap

Rating: 2/10 (24 October 2000)

It's amazing to me how Oliver Stone was once regarded as a truly insightful screenwriter. If I go back and watch what's regarded as some of his earlier lesser work (Salvador, Talk Radio), I would swear it's not the same man behind "Any Given Sunday". This movie is a 2 1/2 hour mid air collision between music video editing and overacting. When you watch the intersplicing of "Ben Hur" and the dinner scene between Pacino and his star quarterback, tell me Stone's not still laboring in the buffoonary of "Natural Born Killers". Somewhere in directing "JFK", Stone discovered the smoke and mirrors of a million feet of footage and overworked editors. Someone should give Stone two million dollars, not a penny more, and sit on him until he remembers more can be suggested in good dialogue than can ever expressed with "gadget" filmmaking. That being said, this one rates as the guiltiest pleasure of 99. It's sports movie cliche to the Nth degree with comments on racism and sexism tossed in for social merit. But the in-game sequences are exciting, with the choppy camera work and thud sounds, extreme violence and hard ribcrushing tackles. And, of course, Pacino chews the scenery again with several locker room speeches which eventually get to his even most cynical player. Hey, it's bad- like a Chuck Norris movie "bad", like a Russ Meyer "bad", the kind of stuff you can't walk out on because there might just be another item you can laugh with your buddies about. The only performance worth mentioning is Jim Brown's. And it's not because he blows you away in a single scene, but instead saddles his moments with a subdued weariness. And in any recent Oliver Stone film, it's the subdued moment which'll stick out like a yellow flag on the line of scrimmage.