Congratulate me: I have made it through to the end of an Oliver Stone film.

Rating: 6/10 (21 February 2001)

My headache will soon pass.
Of course, I did survive, and survive with pleasure, "Conan the Barbarian", but this doesn't count. Stone only wrote the script to "Conan". Since he didn't direct, he couldn't turn his script into a pompous balloon of a film, which is what he did to the script he co-wrote on this occasion.
In retrospect I like "Any Given Sunday" much more than I did at the time. (How could one not? It's not nearly as painful to contemplate as it is to watch.) Much of the writing was very good and, after eternity comes and goes, the story becomes involving. But Jesus, I wish Stone would lay off the hard drugs. You know what I mean: the slightly shaky, shallow-focus photography; the magazine-layout montages; the artificial drumbeat soundtrack; the sepia tinting, the CONSTANT cutting away to show us something else of no more interest than that which was cut away from; the irrelevant , cheaply "symbolic" images (at one point we see the Earth from outer space - it's like Ed Wood and his buffalo ... and speaking of buffalo, it's as if the sound effect of footballers pounding into one another was achieved by dropping dead ones into an empty wheat silo). At least we're spared shots of the American flag this time. I guess Stone used up his quota of posturing flag imagery in "Born on the Fourth of July" and "JFK". In the end what's most notable about Stone's range of mannerisms is how limited it is - and how limitING. What could Stone ever DO with his self-conscious edginess except churn out, by the yard, more and more of this kind of thing?
Another thing... Remember the scene where the team's owner has a conversation with Charlton Heston? (Maybe Charlton Heston wasn't playing himself. Hard to tell.) Heston walks out after delivering what sound like veiled threats of some kind, and Cameron Diaz turns almost to camera and says, "What the PHUCK just happened?" ...Well, if anyone knows, drop me a line.
Stone has real talent. No mere hack could direct so badly. It's possible - nay, likely - that there is a good film buried under Stone's visual rubble; and maybe even with the rubble it IS a good film, despite everything Stone does to ruin it.
But for a better year-long, behind-the-scenes look at a down-on-its-luck football team, I recommend "The Year of the Dogs". It's a documentary, but don't hold that against it - qua fiction it has much more value than "Any Given Sunday". (The only thing Stone's work can claim on its behalf is that it uses higher resolution film.) And don't worry if you're unfamiliar with Australian Rules. I knew no more about Aussie Rules when I saw "Year of the Dogs" than I did about gridiron when I saw "Any Given Sunday", and in the former I could at least tell what was going on.