Any Given Sunday

Oliver Stone should be taken out of the game and given a strict reprimand.  Not only does he indulge us in his fanatical cinematic workings, but he doesn't even have a good story to tell. Oliver Stone is known for his bizarre editing techniques, integrating past film's footage, hazing the image, blurring pictures together. He's also known for taking controversial stands on issues, and illustrating the corruptibility of human nature. Several of his films now stand as classics: Platoon, Wall Street, JFK. Others are spit upon: Natural Born Killers, Nixon. Any Given Sunday lands in the middle of the two categories, but definitely nearer to Natural Born Killers and Nixon than I thought it would.

The movie's main problem is that it's too long. It's rare that you see me complaining about length. I loved that The Green Mile was over three hours. Titanic, I still maintain, is the shortest three hour movie I've ever seen. Lawrence of Arabia is a short four hours, and so is Schindler's List. All those long movies have one thing in common: you're transported into another world. For Any Given Sunday, you're left in the theater audience. You never feel the action, you're never one of the reporters watching the press conference, you never feel the screams of the crowd. You're left in the cold, dark theater. You know you're there, and at about the 2 hour and 20 minute mark you hate that you're there. You begin to squirm to find that impossible-to-find comfortable position in your seat. It makes the remainder of the film impossible to enjoy. It was impossible for me, but I left wondering if it could have been enjoyable if I had found that comfortable position. I don't think that it would have.

It runs at 2 hours and 50 minutes. That's about 60 minutes too long. Probably more. It's a football movie. Stone must have wondered how many football clichés can one fit into two hours? Plenty. How many does Oliver Stone fit into three? More than plenty. Oliver Stone doesn't have a good script, but as expected, he's still to blame. He wrote it. Too many characters are introduced and you never feel for any of them except the possible exception of the owner, Ms. Pagniacci, played winningly by the gorgeous Cameron Diaz.

Oliver Stone ventures into no pleasurable new territory. He strides into plenty of painful places though. He contends that football, a game that used to be pure, is now corrupt. That corruption first came into place the first time the game had to be stopped to go to a commercial. That's all fine and dandy, but am I supposed to care? Should I care that people are more concerned about making their bonuses than about continuing the fine traditions of the sport? The movie never convinces me that I should. The 'football is war' or 'football is corrupt' stance has been used before. Nothing is new. Today, winning is all that matters. But, there are those, like Al Pacino's D'Amato, that say that there's more to football than just winning. We're never told what that is.

The huge cast includes Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz, James Woods, Jamie Foxx, Lawrence Taylor, Jim Brown, Dennis Quaid, LL Cool J, and about thirty other football players. Even this outstanding cast can't make sense of a director and scriptwriter without a clue as to what he's doing. Oliver Stone wanted to make the definitive football movie. He didn't get close.

On a scale of 1 to 10 legends that fall, stars that are born, movies that stink : 4