Any Given Sunday Reviews

Oliver Stone films are always rooted in deep social issues and themes, but Any Given Sunday becomes preachy incredibly quickly. While at times the movie is entertaining, and the entire cast does an excellent job, the preachy racial undertones seep through to give the film less of an enjoyable quality.

One of the poorer football classics boosted only by an exceptional cast.

Phenomenal football film. The speech obviously plays a giant role, but as a whole, the movie is great.

Any Given Sunday is the best football movie ever made, a master piece by Oliver Stone.

The good. Perfect editing. The way the images are melded just sucks you right in. Great photography. Excellent score and music. Superb football action. Razor sharp dialogs. Complete characters. Solid cast that fit incredibly well together. Very involved story with a good number of sub-story, all interesting and well developed. Nicely paced scenario, with good emotional breaks and powerful action scenes. It's a long film with lots of meat and every minute is worth it, they even used the final generic to pitch us the epilogue. Nicely done. Great ending.

The actors. Al Pacino is playing his best role here. He gets away from his usual angry almost psychotic roles into a more mellow and near sentimental human being, but still very much troubled and imperfect. Cameron Diaz, for once, plays a hard nut to crack, tough, nowhere near nice and she does it extremely well. Dennis Quaid plays the hero, again, and does it superbly as he always does. Jamie Foxx does his thing as the cool and bitter professional athlete.

Now for the smaller roles that round up this flick and elevate it to greatness. LL Cool J plays the money grabbing star to perfection. Matthew Modine plays a institutionalized game-first team doctor who faces Aaron Eckhart as the do-gooder in a battle over the health of the player. Jim Brown is the perfect tough defensive coach with a heart of gold and a head full of the glory days. Lela Rochon is the sweet intelligent life partner of the third string quarterback. Lauren Holly is the hateful witch trying to control her legendary husband. Lawrence Taylor captures our attention as the bruised captain and keystone of the defensive team. Bill Bellamy plays a young receiver. And Andrew Bryniarski denotes himself as the rough angry offensive line man.

The bad. The opposing team design. The costumes look like they were done last minute, not part of a professional football league.

The ugly. Nothing, it's near damn perfect.

The result. A football movie that's so well made, anyone can enjoy it. See it.

At some point in their careers actors start to imitate themselves. That can be annoying, right Al? Oliver Stone is clumsy and trenchant. He sucks.

An excellent film about football and the politics surrounding it professionally. Stone's "Game of Inches" speech delivered by Pacino is one of the most rousing scenes ever captured on celluloid.

American Football... never thought of it as an interesting sport, still found the movie very good!! Great choice of actors, they were all amazing.. And a very enjoyable soundtrack

On of the Best Sports movies ever!

Its Pretty Long, I Give It That. It Was A Good Movie Though.

Directed by Oliver Stone, who co-wrote this sports film with John Logan, this is a powerful if overlong film about American football. Set in a world of fictional American teams, but it's well filmed and has a good cast. Stone has tackled Vietnam, politics, the media and finance in his films, and he's merciless when he shows the wheeling-dealing of what goes on behind the scenes and on the pitch. It focuses on the Miami Sharks, a once great football team who have fallen on hard times, and struggling to win. This puts pressure on their manager Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino), who has 30 years of experience in the business, and there's more bad news when his star quarterback Jack "Cap" Rooney (Dennis Quaid) is severely injured on the pitch, forcing D'Amato to call on substitute Willy Beaman (Jamie Foxx) to take Rooney's place while he recovers. Beaman is nervous, but he soon picks up confidence and becomes a well liked player, helping them win and regain ground. But, Beaman soon gets arrogant and selfish with his new found fame, much to the anger of D'Amato and club owner Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz), but Beaman learns the hard way about his behaviour. It's a powerful drama with some good performances and good cameos, also including LL Cool J, James Woods, Ann-Margret and Charlton Heston. Foxx holds his own against Pacino, who seems to be angry for most of the film, not Stone's best, but it's good.

I was half asleep while watching this the first time.

It could have dug a little deeper for the darker side of pro football.

Critics don't like any sports movies so watch this despite the pretentious boring reviews you expect from pretentious critics.....its good.

One of the few movies that gives the sport its just due from an on field perspective. Pacino, Woods & Quaid carry the show off the field but its Stone's gritty portrait of the gladiators that conveys the excitement & appeal of the film.

GREAT football movie!

Standard film, mediocre, nothing further, worth one watch or two.

92%

My favorite American football movie. Shows all aspects of the sport (less on the fans).

Oliver Stone brings his unique style to the sports drama in his 1998 film Any Given Sunday. The film wastes no time to get into the face of the action. Cinematographer Salvatore Totino plunges the camera right into it, and the movements are fast, confusing and all over the map. Despite this, there are still some interesting shots of in depth Football footage, and it's cool to see, if you can get past the frantic pace. However this is an awful sports film that had potential of being a great film. Unfortunately, the script lacks anything that is interesting in terms of a truly compelling sports film. Oliver Stone tries far too hard at delivering a film that all testosterone and no substance. There's nothing on-screen to appeal to viewers and sports drama enthusiasts. Any Given Sunday is forgettable in the long run, and it definitely doesn't stand out among other sports classics. Oliver Stone misses the mark with this movie, and he is better with conceiving kinetic action flicks like Natural Born Killers than making Sports dramas. This was really the start of a creative rut for Stone, and he would not recapture that energy until 2006's World Trade Center. This movie is just a collection of sports clichés and wasted talent. Oliver Stone has made one of his worst films with this one and it fails in terms of a truly compelling plot and effective performances. I really didn't enjoy this one, and though it had great Football footage, it wasn't enough to deliver a truly memorable sport drama. Stone is a good director, but with this genre, he should never touch another film like this. The material was lacking, the talent was there, but ultimately the execution was poor and ultimately not worth your time. At one point near the ending, we see a sports caster played by director Oliver Stone shake his head as if he realized his film was bad, and it is.

It's intense. The editing is fantastic.. Pacino delivers his usual rah-rah speeches and grand scenes but the script doesn't really get into the real politics of modern football. it merely touches on them focusing only on the best and worst. It's sort of a hit and miss... nonetheless extremely entertaining and rewatchable!

Could've been great at 2 hours.