Touchdown...and out!

Rating: Null/10 (12 April 2000)

I'd been looking forward to seeing this film for a while, but have to say that the two and a half hours I spent in the cinema this afternoon were totally wasted. This movie was meant to be an expose on American football wrapped up in various power struggles, which followed the usual lines...man vs woman....old timer vs rookie....money vs integrity..etc etc. You could see the story lines unfold a mile away and quite frankly by the end I didn't care what happened and to whom. Al Pacino was.... well, he was Al Pacino really. We know the guy can act and we know he's very good at shouting, frothing at the mouth and looking like a lost bloodhound, but unfortunately his character was totally one dimensional and poor Al might just as well have spent his time barking at the moon. I'm not an American and I've never played American football (watched it on British tv though) but the scenes on the gridiron were, even for me, a total let down. All we saw time after time was erratic and blurred close ups where the sound guys were really allowed to go to town with their, "Big Hit" noises...any fluidity and grace of the plays was completely missed. Things weren't helped either by Oliver Stone's directing, which got very annoying after a while. American football... its a tough, seat of your pants world so lets have lots of shaky camera and millions of fast cuts and a different piece of music every five seconds. Boy, nothing has got under my skin so much since Natural Born Killers, directed by....I rest my case. Nothing personal though Ol', I loved JFK and Platoon!