Realistic look at football, Stone's best since JFK

Rating: 7/10 (3 September 2000)

"Any Given Sunday" is not a real pleasant movie to watch. What you are seeing is a real life adaptation of how athletes changed from players who played for the love of the game into a bunch of greedy spoiled a******s. If you put this point aside, you will really like the movie.
The cinematography is unbelievable, maybe the best I've ever seen. It's nowhere near as good on video, but it still captures you into the middle of the action pretty well. The acting is also terrific. If anyone else besides Al Pacino was the coach, it would no doubt be their best role ever. However, this may not even be in Pacino's top 5 but he was still very good. Cameron Diaz is great as the super bitch owner, and Jamie Foxx was suprizingly good as Willie "Steamin" Beamon. Dennis Quaid, LL Cool J, Lawrence Taylor, and Lauren Holly turned in strong supporting performances just to name a few.
The video version is the director's cut. There are 2 scenes added. One is some sex in a party, it's not that graphic, just unnecesary. The other scene is maybe the grossest scene you will ever see in a movie and undoubtedly was cut to get an R. In the original movie during the last game, you see a linebacker on the opposing team screaming on the sideline with blood on his face and then they go back to the game. In the video, you see why he's screaming.
Not one of the best movies ever, but it did a great job of what it was trying to do. ***.5 stars