Terribly directed rubbish

Rating: 3/10 (11 August 2014)

Any Given Sunday was a film I had wanted to watch for some time. I knew it had Al Pacino in it who supposedly gives a great speech, and there were other actors in it who are capable of great things. The fact that Oliver Stone directed it led me to believe it would be good film. Unfortunately, while watching this it soon became clear that this was an abysmal film with extremely poor directing.
The film starts with a nauseatingly filmed American Football match in which a lot of things happen, but few are explained properly. Now I don't know anything about American Football, but in a good film you can usually follow what's going on. In Any Given Sunday you might as well ask a cat what's happening. Unfortunately, this goes on for the rest of the film. Important characters just come along without a proper introduction and we never learn anything substantial about them. Because of this I quickly lost interest for every character, and nothing they did or said mattered to me.
A confusing, bland story is bad enough in itself, but this also means that great actors are wasted. The film stars Al Pacino Jamie Foxx, Dennis Quaid, James Woods and Cameron Diaz. In my opinion every one of these actors are capable of good performances. But throughout the film only Pacino, Foxx and Diaz are able to make something out of it. The rest of the actors add little to the quality of this picture. Dennis Quaid is boring and unconvincing as the only sane football player in the film. We hardly learn anything about him even though he's an important character. James Woods plays a doctor who acts like he's straight out of a parody. And the rest of the football team look and act like rappers and professional wrestlers.
Now I don't think the actors are to blame because the directing is absolutely terrible. It's hard to believe this was made by a capable director, never mind an Academy Award winner like Oliver Stone. Most of the film looks more like a rap video or a very poor episode of CSI Miami than an actual film. In some scenes you suddenly get pointless shots of the city or clouds or even Ben-Hur. I also wondered about the casting. The film has its fair share of people with limited acting skills, some of them even play main characters like LL Cool J. I also read Oliver Stone wanted P. Diddy for the character that Jamie Foxx played. This really amazes me, I mean why would a great director like Oliver Stone want to work with talentless artists who can't act to save their lives? When the film was finished I could not believe Oliver Stone directed this. It was more like watching a cheap advert or a music video. The opening sequence of The Last Boy Scout was a better American football film than this. What on earth went wrong? Was Oliver Stone on drugs? Did he do this for a bet? I suppose some of the actors are decent, and the story starts to pick up near the end. But that's it, there's nothing else. I would have never expected something like this from Oliver Stone, and I hope I never have to see something like it again.