Any Given Sunday (1999)-"R"

Run Time:162 minutes

2 & 1/2 stars out of 4

I was somewhat disappointed by Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday (1999). After hearing good things about it from friends and critics, I thought it was a must-see and I rented it as soon as I could. I will give it this: Any Given Sunday has the hardest hits of any other football film I've ever seen, and that helps my view of the film a lot. The movie basically follows the path of the fictional Miami Sharks football team from marginality to the play-offs for the also-fictional Pantheon Bowl. It has a powerful cast, including James Woods, Al Pacino, and Cameron Diaz, and a successful director in Oliver Stone, but I still feel it was lacking in some areas. Jamie Foxx plays Willie "Steamin'" Beamen, a once 3rd-string quarterback, who has been catapulted into a starting position after the injury of the teams 38-year-old starting QB, Cap Rooney (Dennis Quaid). With the help of leadership from the head coach, Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino), Beamen shines through as an extremely talented athlete. Beamen is young and headstrong, though, and he rips the team apart, focusing only on his own glory and money. D'Amato sees his team succeeding more, but the players becoming individual, not as a team. Despite the problems, the team pulls together, and makes it to the Play-Offs. To prevent the summary from ruining the ending, I won't proceed any farther with the plot, but I will say that the ending is one of the strong points of the movie. On the whole, however, I found myself not really feeling too bad for these millionaire football players and management, despite the best efforts of Oliver Stone to portray them as washed-up or corrupted wrecks. Another thing that bothered about the film was its enormous length. Almost three hours long, I lost interest in the middle, and that definitely dragged down my enthusiasm for the film. All said, I was somewhat let down by the length and inability for me to identify with the characters. On the other hand, the hits were great, and the parts of the film that took place on the field were exciting and intense.