Rating: 
Summary: Pretty Disappointing
Review: ANY GIVEN SUNDAY was overlong, at times annoying, and had a disposable script. There was absolutely no need for this movie to drag on for almost three hours. If you're looking forward to the football playing scenes, be prepared to be vexed and disoriented. Stone obviously tried to stage the football scenes in a unique way, and there's nothing wrong with that, but his method just didn't work, at many times giving you just very bad views of the action on the field. Not all that is different is good. The plot was nothing too interesting or original either. There are many better football films out there.
Rating:
Summary: A cinematograpic explosion of the worst kind.
Review: This film was just plain noisy with overdone cinematography. Flash here, there, stop, go, slow down, speed up, insert a loud obnoxious noise, quick everyone talk at once -- it goes on for over two hours. The shot of Pacino in tears on a split screen with a football would have been laughable had it not been so pathetic. They funny thing is that if they had just stuck with the script it might have been mildly interesting to watch - the cast and acting was good, at least what you could see in the seconds before the "tilt-a-whirl" started up at full speed again.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Football Movie
Review: I saw this movie when it first came out and I must tell you that I think this is a great football movie it has great action and great acting by Jamie Foxx, LL Cool J and Al Pacino. So if you are in the mood for a great football movie then watch this film. Greatest football movie since Varisty Blues.
Rating: 
Summary: In And Out
Review: Al Pacino stars as a head pro football coach whose star quarterback is out due to injuries and game attendance is so low the franchise may be moved. These events place his feature into doubt and force him into taking a hard look at where he stands both in and outside of the football stadium.
Rating:
Summary: Take two aspirin before, during and after this film.
Review: Oliver Stone likes beating up the people who decide to watchhis movies.He does it here not to show us El Salvador, or a famousrock band or politics , or how the media assaults us,or even theVietnam War,-- he does it because of football. FOOTBALL? And he has nothing more to say than was already very well stated in a much better film, North Dallas Forty. There aren't just five or six multiple quick cut establishing shots to begin nearly every scene in this film, there are a dozens. There are strange shots which make no sense whatsoever but merely serve as something that was shot to stick between two other shots. There are triple and quadruple angles on charging football players, shots from inside football helmets, crane shots, steadicam shots, and lots of tracking and hand held shots. You don't get any sense of what play is being run however. You're not ever shown a complete play from start to finish. We just get chaos. There are huge booming bangs and mini-explosions as football player tackle each other and then suddenly, the sound disappears completely. There's slow-mo, there's some digitally altered work with motion and speed. It's all here. Why? To excite, titilate, entertain, overwhelm and bulldoze an audience into thinking it's watching an important Oliver Stone movie of course. Because of the flash and over-kill it takes Stone a full 45 minutes to set up the film. It could have been done in ten. Lots of characters to introduce us to. None of them are original and none of them will have any depth. Oh sure there's an impressive list of actors on view, and I almost expected Bruce Dern as a terrorist and the Goodyear blimp to show up. The plot? Not a lot to that either. The Miami Sharks have lost 4 games straight and the once great team may not make the play-offs. It's star quarterback is getting old and yikes... gets badly injured. Out of nowhere the third string quarterback shows promise, but he's not a team player. The coach has lost his fire for the game. The new team owner is a young overly ambitious woman who wants to prove she can more ruthless and heartless than anyone.. even Steinbrenner!!! She wants to win and doesn't care who she has to threaten, fire, or manipulate to do it. Sound familiar? Of course it does. All of the characters we meet in Any Given Sunday are familiar and you the viewer can color them in. In fact, you better have a lot crayons because as these characters are written there isn't much offered in terms of depth or nuance. Nuance? Who's got time for such things in a 2 and a half hour Oliver Stone movie. Now pardon me while I add some elements to this shot... I'll have some music playing, I'll have a sports guy on the television talking quite negatively about the coach of the Sharks (Al Pacino) while he sits in the crowded bar getting very drunk (what a man!) and is propositioned by a young high priced hooker, Elizabeth Berkley. They'll seem like there are five or six things going on at once. Of course none of it is very important, or original, but the audience will be just over-whelmed with all this stuff, all this detail. Well unimportant, details... but lots of them. Movement, noise, lots of cuts. There are some great shots in this movie. But when you throw this much at the wall, some of it has to stick. Occasionally, when you senses aren't being over-loaded and assaulted by a chaotic cacophony of sound, camera movement and weird quick cuts and camera angles, you realize there are some really awful bits of dialogue being spouted in this film. In fact there are several scenes which really needed a zinger, a clever line, a nice bit of business, a special moment, to make the scene work or even have any purpose whatsoever-and we get nothing. It lies there. Well it doesn't lie there exactly because we are always cutting, the camera is always moving. There might be some people who are fooled by this technique, but most will get very tired of it after the films first half hour. It doesn't build, it has no where to go, it's already started at a manic over-the top level. Where is it going to go? What's really annoying is how repetitive the film. You have all these camera angles, all these tricks, all this coverage of every conceivable angle. . . from a puppet master director who doesn't trust his audience, his script or even his actors. He manipulates every single aspect of what we are watching. Rarely is a shot held for move than a few seconds. He keeps moving but it's over the same territory over and over and over again. It wides up not being exhilarating, not being revealing, just head-ache inducing. Over and over and over again we are shown bits of pieces of the game in almost the same way. Once, twice, three and four times we see similar types of shots of crowds, fans, coaches, players, refs, cheerleaders, people in the press box...(. Eeek.. There's Oliver Stone doing play by play announcing) not just introducing the big game... but as a prelude to every game we see, even to one of the practices. Look look... We got a big budget to spend and we can hire lots of extras... I can shoot lots and lots of film. Looky Looky...!!!! It gets really ridiculous at times if you're not too numb and utterly desensitized to pay attention. Like when we hear an announcer on t.v. talking about 'a swirl of events', and the camera is on a team graphic and begins to swirl slightly as it cuts to another shot, probably one of a team flag, there's lots of shots of team flags. What clever, brilliant, film-making. There's nothing new here, just flash and more flash on a subject that's been written about and filmed many times and more effectively than Stone manages to do. Go see North Dallas Forty, or Hoop Dreams again before bothering with this time-waster that will wind up making aspirin manufacturers some extra profits. I can just imagine Oliver Stone someday doing a commentary track for this film (he doesn't on DVD out now) and talking about how shortened attention spans ,challenged him to create the ultimate modern football/gladiator movie. A movie where the game is more than a game. And of course when a game becomes more important than just a game it means the participants must sacrifice everything real--marriages, morals, even ethics and so his movie sacrifices everything in presenting the GAME. Uh-huh. Even if Stone were to actually say something like this, it would be far more interesting than anything he has presented to us in this chaotic, numbing, repetitive, headache inducing, everything but the kitchen sink two and a half hour update of ESPN's best of Sport Center: The Football edition he has the temerity to call a film. Chris Jarmick, Author of The Glass Cocoon with Serena F. Holder Available end of January 2001. Thanks for pre-ordering your copy at Amazon.
Rating:
Summary: "Any Given Sports Film"
Review: It's not if you win or lose, it's how you play the game. Football as a metaphor for life; you have to fight for every inch, on the field, as in life. Or perhaps on the "playing" field that "is" life. Take your pick, you get the idea; whatever you choose you can bet it's a concept director Oliver Stone apparently seems to think he originated in his over-long, self-indulgent miasma "Any Given Sunday," starring Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz and Dennis Quaid. A decent movie? Yes. Original? No. Stone pulls out every cliche in the book, twists it all like so much play dough to put his own spin on it and serves it up like so many hot dogs you can buy at the stadium while you watch his fictitious Miami Sharks play. The recipe for this particular potpourri includes the quarterback willing to play-through-the-pain-for-the-team; the third-stringer whose success goes to his head; discrimination; locker room scene after locker room scene that play like, well, locker room scenes; players with names like "Madman," "Beastman," "J-Man," "Shark" and "Cap;" a ruthless, young General Manager/owner who inherited the position from her father; the unethical team physician whose diagnoses of injured players coincide with the needs of the team; the young, ethical assistant team physician; and the legendary coach who just wants to inspire his team and win one more. The title of this film could have been "Any Given Sports Film." All of which may seem contradictory after stating that this is a "decent" film. Perhaps. But understand that by decent I mean that this movie was, if nothing else, a professional endeavor that was packaged and delivered in a way you would expect from the star-studded cast Stone assembled here. The problem lies with Stone, whose work on this project fairly rings of arrogance and self aggrandizement. All of the aforementioned "potpourri" ingredients, for instance, are actually legitimate aspects of this story; but in Stone's hands the legitimate comes across as cliche, while any attempt at profundity seems merely pretentious. His endless use of slow motion photography during the game sequences ultimately has a nullifying effect on the drama it is, I assume, meant to enhance; and it's a perfect example of the excesses he allowed himself that give this movie the sense of pretending to be something it is not. It's a case of the artist who is too close to his work being given too much freedom, or in this case, enough rope with which to hang himself. Pacino is a star, always larger than life, with an incomparable screen presence from whom we've come to expect a certain quality of performance. And here, as Coach Tony D'Amato, he certainly does not disappoint. That his character lacks originality is not his fault; it's the part he was given and he makes the most of it. To his credit he keeps him interesting, even though this is a guy you've seen a number of times in just as many movies. Cameron Diaz does not fare as well; she simply was not given the time necessary to develop her character, Christina Pagniacci (The time was available, but Stone chose to use it for yet nine or ten more slow-mo close-ups of a hand reaching, reaching, reaching for a football prominently featuring the "Wilson" brand), and Dennis Quaid fell victim as well with his portrayal of Cap Rooney. Jamie Foxx fared as well as anyone involved as third-string quarterback Willie Beamen, and there are some notable supporting performances from Lawrence Taylor (Shark), LL Cool J (J-Man) James Woods (Dr. Mandrake), Matthew Modine (Dr. Powers) and Ann-Margret (Margaret Pagniacci). Charlton Heston, however, is wasted in a cameo as the Commissioner of the League. Some would say you do not necessarily have to like football to like this movie; that may be true. Subjectively, I would say that to like this movie at all, you must approach it with very low expectations (and it certainly wouldn't hurt if you did like football). As I see it, with "Any Given Sunday" Oliver Stone lowered the bar and allowed himself to step over the line, which is especially disappointing in light of the fact that this is the director who gave us such excellent, thought-provoking films as "Platoon," "JFK," and "Born On The Fourth Of July." And in the future, I'm sure he'll add more titles to that list; unfortunately, this film will not be one of them.
Rating:
Summary: The Inside Look at Professional Pigskin
Review: "Any Given Sunday" is the only football-based movie in modern-day entertainment that doesn't hold back on anything at all. It shows the true events of a common professional football team. Their ups and downs are both included; this movie isn't just football; it dives into the lives of professional athletes and is very descriptive in that it shows how they(players) often get wrapped up in greed, hate and envy. It shows of how friends can turn against each other in the case of greed and it shows things such as the players and coaches opinions of the mass media. The players and management study their sports on and off the gridiron. When the movie shows the game going on, it feels like you're playing. It is right there with the play and every sound made and movement is right with you and it shows everyone what it is really like. Contrary to other football movies like "The Replacements", it doesn't say that the good guys always win. BELIEVABLE STORY. Pacino does another very convincing and emotional role and Jamie Foxx does fairly decent in one of his non-comedy roles. If you look at this in the eyes that "it's just a football movie" then it will seem far too long. But, if you understand it's depth and truancy of the sports world, you'll enjoy this. A WINNER
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: Al Pacino delivers in this action/drama about football. It shows how much a man loves football and the greatness it takes to be a player and a coatch. To make the fire flicker Olver Stone gets a huge cast of blockbuster names such as Cameron Diaz, James Woods, Dennis Quad, and Jamie Foxx. Very good movie.
Rating:
Summary: Oliver Stone meets football. Not a good sign...
Review: First, I am not what you'd consider a fan of Oliver Stone, although Wall Street remains my favorite movie of all time. This movie was a big disappointment to me. I expected so much more, especially with Al Pacino. The story line seemed to drag on and on, although nothing like JFK :-) If you want a good football movie, I'd recommend The Longest Yard, The Program, The Repalcements, even The Waterboy over this one. The audio (DVD 5.1 channel) is great, but that's where the highpoints end.
Rating:
Summary: Great Movie, Simple DVD
Review: Any Given Sunday is Oliver Stone's expose of football, and more importantly the lives of the men that experience it. This hard hitting drama runs at almost 3 hours, and not a minute is wasted. The cast is all-star and cast perfectly. This movie proved to me that Lawrence Taylor can act, as he has the most powerful scene in the movie in the shower room. The Any Given Sunday DVD is very simple for such a great movie. The only extras are a documentary, a trailer, and a music video. There is also some extra footage thrown in. Although lacking features, sound makes up for the lack of extras. If you got a nice sound system, you will feel like you're right in the game, with every hit and crunch. If you are a DVD sound-junkie, then this one is for you.
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