Oliver Stone... what are you doing?

Rating: 3/10 (8 August 2011)

Maybe it's just me, but when I hear about an Oliver Stone directed football movie starring none other than Al Pacino I'm expecting a masterpiece. That's why I was quite taken aback by how much of a turd Any Given Sunday is. It's the story of fictional NFL team the Miami Sharks. Al Pacino is the team's head coach who is trying to desperately to take them to the playoffs, but to do so he must battle against unnecessary roughness on and off the field. Dennis Quaid plays the teams star quarterback who, after a nasty hit, is put out of the game and replaced by Jamie Foxx who somehow becomes a superstar after winning just two games, because that's how the NFL works, right? Turmoil continually befalls the team as they try to keep it together so they can go all the way and have the season of a lifetime.
What I love about Oliver Stone is the way he can take something we've seen plenty of times before and make it into something highly original and absolutely brilliant. He changed the face of war movies with his robust shout out to the troops in Platoon. He took a rock and roll biopic and turned it into an existential masterpiece with The Doors. He allowed the presidential biopic to soar to new heights with JFK. So his attempt at a football movie should have been revolutionary. But instead we are given this sappy, cheesy, poorly written, poorly directed stinker of a film. What the hell happened? Any Given Sunday is just one big melting pot of clichés. There is absolutely nothing original here for a football film. You might not realize it, but you know the entire plot of the film before you ever hit play. I'm not sure that this film get any more obvious. It is the complete package of typical football film story lines. You have the tormented coach who can't keep his team together. The all-star quarterback who gets injured, letting the far superior rookie play. Said rookie is an egomaniac who can't get his life together because of the excess of fame. But of course a few inspirational speeches from coach and the whole team is golden once again. The flat lining lack of originality in this film is appalling.
However, what's even more appalling is Oliver Stone's god awful direction. This film is so sporadic and lacks any kind of structure to its editing. We are constantly barraged by quick cuts that do nothing but distract and quickly become very annoying. The look of this film is supposed to seem fun and artistic, but really it is just pretentious. Stone is trying to do something talented with the direction here, but it doesn't work at all and only gets in the way. There is hardly a shot in this film that lasts for more than 30 seconds. The camera will be focused on one person as they deliver a monologue, but the camera constantly changes angle on them, jumping from spot to spot on their face which gets ridiculously annoying. Stone has displayed such finesse and such raw talent for direction in the past. I really don't know what happened here.
Any Given Sunday is easily one of the biggest wastes of close to three hours of my life. It's a truly terrible film that lacks any kind of control, structure, meaning, or purpose. Al Pacino does a nice job while the rest of the cast are pretty sorry. A football film from Oliver Stone should stand out amongst all other football films, but instead this film just takes every football film cliché and applies that to itself, never raising the bar of originality. The only reason this film would stand out amongst others like is would be because it is so horrible. I never thought I'd say this about an Oliver Stone film but... I hate this film.