"Any Given Sunday" (1999) - Movie Review

The first fifteen minutes of the football match “Any Given Sunday” shows breaks barriers and freshens our sight which has only been treated with clichéd slow motions and heavy orchestra towards that one winning moment. That one moment comes in “Any Given Sunday” with a twist of drinking a straight up clean shot of hard liquor. It is rapid, lively, buzzed and gives a kick. It is due to its “Stoned” treatment it has got of all the sports film ever seen. It has got Oliver Stone’s vision. But it lasts until we see the compromise made out towards the end and it brings sadness to a sports film which has the audacity and visual art throughout the movie.

The film revolves around the coin movers, king makers, losers, recovering winners, cover up people and the fulcrum of economics driven by this gargantuan sports in the United States. Stone uses fictionalized teams and we watch Miami Sharks and its intrinsic show players and personalities. At the start of the film, it loses its ace but aging quarter back Cap (Dennis Quaid) which puts the aging coach Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino) dead in the water. He brings in the second quarter back who soon succumbs to another blow bringing the tertiary option Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx). He does not win the match but shows his promising skills shunned so long in the team. At this point everyone pretty much comes to the conclusion of the routine this film is going to adapt. Sure it is going to have the stamping authority of scenes by Oliver Stone but the fifteen minutes is good enough for it to be forgetful. The film spins off into something different, and it takes the multiple figures of characters to affect the game, conscience and the power.

It has a myriad cast of James Woods, Cameron Diaz, LL Cool J, Aaron Eckhart and lot of NFL Hall of Fame players making cameos. And it makes them to contribute their miniscule part in an enormous screenplay. The film though is more about Tony and Beamen who are representatives of the changing generations in the game of football. Tony has been a great coach enjoying success and close friendship with the team’s owner. The owner is dead and is taken up by the young daughter Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz) and she is not much for football either. But that is a huge business to sustain her career and she is finding it hard for the people around her to attach so much emotion and legacy to it. Tony now surrounded by the youth who are more focused on the money than the game and passion is struggling to cope up. Tony is no saint either who has a plan of his own. In the midst of it we see the internal power battle in the game of testosterone spitting its control and reign in player’s locker rooms.

Stone mixes real life archive footages of foot ball games to this fictitious story. I am not a fan of foot ball and I am not fully aware of the rules either but the film is more than foot ball. It is about the back ground ugly picture of individuals banking everything including the possibility of death for earning those million dollars. Seeing “Any Given Sunday” reminded a much more financial storm by the game of Cricket in India. At least in US there are number of teams and number of opportunities but there is only one national team (the league is coming on though in name of ICL and IPL) and once a player shines for couple of games, it is heaven at the doorstep with him being granted the Midas touch of currency. The selection, politics and the ugliness should be made us a film to give a wake up call on its religious contagiousness over the people. The attachment of making it more than a game draws unwanted pestering consequences and enmity. The game loses its value.

Stone gives a great foot ball story and then the unexpected disaster happens. There is a visible quest for a fairy tale ending the sports films have always thrived on. But the film has bend over backwards in an angle unaware by Hollywood on giving this game the truth it very much needed. Why does the concentrated team have to win? Why does sports film has this obsession towards a nail biting win? Rest of the films is fine but Stone succumbing to the same scenario made me sad. The character of Willie Beamen of course needs to have the redemption and every thing is out there but it could have been a more realistic end it preached about. Despite the unethical and immoral take on the game, Stone made it a sweet digestive content to live on. The commentary the film brings about on this game can be as close as “Syriana” or “Crash” and it is true that there are countless youths dedicating and relying on this single game of hitting the jackpot and losing everything in the process. “Any Given Sunday” is the best foot ball film I have ever seen which could have been a great film too if it had the guts to take the shot.