Any Given Sunday
I feel as though Oliver Stone wants to make an important sports movie with his football drama, “Any Given Sunday.” I do not feel like he has anything important to say on the subject, however. If you’ve followed me on Sonic Cinema, and know me on social media, you’ll know that not only am I a big football fan, but I also have a weakness for the underdog sports movie. In structure, that is exactly what the screenplay by Stone and John Logan is as we follow the ups and downs of the Miami Sharks’s season. In impact on an audience, Stone doesn’t have one nearly as strong as a couple of football films that would come out the next year, “The Replacements” and “Remember the Titans.” It all comes down to execution and character; in one of those, Stone falls far short of the mark.
The film is based on a couple of books, although lack of cooperation by the NFL forced Stone to make up the team and league, which is reminiscent of the USFL and World Football Leagues. That’s not a problem- “The Replacements” did the same thing- but from the start, Stone feels lost in how to approach this material. He throws us immediately into the action for the Sharks, and shortly after the film has started, we see the Sharks’s veteran QB, Jack “Cap” Rooney (Dennis Quaid) go down with a terrible injury to his back, and almost immediately, his backup does, as well. Head coach Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino) has no choice but to go with his third stringer, Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx), and immediately, the team begins to show some life, but tensions begin to swell as Beamen tries to navigate the egos of his teammates, and the inflation of his own as on-field success turns him into a sensation. Can the Sharks, whom have been floundering for years, to the point of young owner Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz) looking into a move to Los Angeles, find their footing to make the playoffs, or will they tear themselves up from the inside?
In the 157-minute Director’s Cut of the film I watched, Stone does not set the stakes for the team until a full 30 minutes into the film, and what we’ve seen before that is almost numbing. This has been praised for the way Stone and cinematographer Salvatore Totino film the action on the field, but the shot composition and editing in that first game we’re thrown into is chaos, with no sense of geography, development of the scene, or setting perspective for us to acclimate ourselves- we’re just put head-first into the action. This is part of what throws me out of the movie early on, and why I wonder if Stone (who appears on-screen as a color commentator for the games) has anything meaningful to say about football, and the people whose livelihoods are at stake playing it. Once the film settles down into individual character scenes, focus is restored, and we see Stone wanting to bring the realities of professional football, in every facet, to life by focusing on this one team. I’m not sure if it’s any more or less meaningful as any other sports movie- I would tend to feel as though it’s less meaningful.
Part of why this movie is so aggravating to watch is that there isn’t really anything in its approach that makes it feel like an Oliver Stone film (except for some casual sexism and misogyny to go with the dick-swinging of the male characters). The visual language isn’t the controlled kinetic energy of “JFK” or “Natural Born Killers,” but feels like Michael Bay or Simon West was directing a facile sports movie. There are moments that are out-right lunacy- like the offensive line letting an alligator loose in the team shower- and a profound lack of subtlety as Stone intercuts a dinner scene between D’Amato and Beamen with clips from “Ben Hur” for some reason, and there is just too much dead air in this film where nothing of circumstance to the film’s narrative happens. This might be the most disappointed I’ve been with a Stone film, and that includes “Alexander.” He’s got a lot of really great actors playing these characters- including NFL legends Jim Brown as the Defensive Coordinator and Lawrence Taylor as the star, but aging, linebacker- and when he gives them good individual scenes, they come alive; unfortunately, the film lacks a distinct path its following, a real theme it’s trying to hammer home. It’s unfocused, and thus, barely holds our interest, even when it leads to the big game at the end all of these movies end up at. The problem is, I don’t necessarily care what the outcome is, because “Any Given Sunday” has barely given me a reason to do so.
