Same old, same old.

Rating: 5/10 (24 December 1999)

I was hoping Oliver Stone would at least come up with something new and/or different when using American Football as his subject matter. Perhaps he was too concerned with his more-than-a-cameo role as a broadcaster to pay attention to the fact that he was making a bland movie with uninteresting characters and a recycled plot.
In this film we're blessed with: - The old coach who many think is past his time - Veteran players who forego injuries for one more win - Young hotshots who don't care about the team - The meddling owner who cares only about the bottom line - The zany defensive players - Flashy offensive players - The must-have-drugs-to-kill-the-pain attitude - Sardonic, overly critical sports reporters - Cameos from football players and coaches, past and present... pretty much playing themselves
With uneven editing and writing, incongruous dialogue and the total lack of ANYTHING fresh in this film, the only saving grace of the movie is that the football sequences are filmed quite well, with both accurate and creative sound editing to help the atmosphere. However, even these sequences fail to fulfill completely, as they are too replete with a fast-cut, MTV-style of editing with the audience bombasted throughout by loud, obtrusive music. No original score here, the film's "score" is merely a marketing machine to sell CDs.
Stone makes the world of professional (American) football seem so cut-and-dry by using every cliche there is; each character and action is nothing we haven't seen before in another movie, or every week on TV and in the newspapers.
And at 165 minutes, one wonders why some scenes weren't cut entirely, as many of them do little, if anything, to either further the plot or offer a closer look into this world.
5 out of 10.