The preview for this one is the only time a Kid Rock song will sound good

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2001)

Funniest (and most accurate) description of Any Given Sunday that I've heard? Tackling Private Ryan. For a football movie, it's pretty damn epic (epic, in movie terms, has come to describe any movie over two and a half hours). I liked it. I liked it quite a bit. It's kind of a patchwork of about a dozen football movie cliches sewn into one, all under one of the modern masters of film, Oliver Stone. The old quarterback, trying desperately to hold on, the young rookie, nipping at his heels, the duelling doctors, one in it for the fame, the other well, for the fame, but with some concern for the players, the player risking brain damage if he can just hold out for one more game, the new female owner (surprise! she's a power hungry b****), you get the idea by now. Any of these cliches by themselves would make for a pretty crappy movie, but when you throw them all together, when you only spend a little time on each one, and when you mix them Stone's hyper kinetic, MTV style football clips you get a thrilling experience. I also appreciated the lack of on-the-field football cliches here, since you cannot decipher any sort of plays being made. It's all footballs being thrown, guys being tackled, and cheering crowds. Good performances by the whole cast (and what a cast! Stone's out-done himself once again in casting familiar faces). Pachino gives a surprisingly restrained performance here, as his character is supposed to be old, tired, and almost over the hill. James Woods is a scene stealer (as usual). Stone's one of the greats, so please, don't knock him for doing a football movie. I've heard some people say, "He's the man behind Natural Born Killers, JFK, Platoon, Nixon, Born on the Fourth of July, and now he's doing this?". The man has paid his dues, if he wants to do a football movie, no one is more entitled to do so. Now, if it were a bad football movie, I'd be the first one to complain, but it's not. 7/10 stars. G'night!