Any Given Sunday

Plot

Tony is the coach of the Miami Sharks, and his team is suffering one of the worst losses in the history of the game. In one awful game, the lead two Quarterbacks have near season ending injuries, and the #3 on the call sheet Willie steps up – however he lacks the maturity to lead the team. New team owner Christina, the daughter of the former owner wants to shake things up – and get rid of all the old players – and old coach.

Direction

Oliver Stone does a solid job directing, and he has a few great techniques used. However I think there seemed to be a bit overkill at times. One that was overused was the characters thoughts dissolve on screen (Christina talking about the game and game play over game play etc).

At 150m it was a little too long too. Some editing could have been used to cull some non-essential shots – and with 3000 ‘cuts’ it was quite abrasive at times.

Cast/Characters

With over a dozen characters with notable plot points in the film – it felt too congested. While most of these cast members were either big names at the time, or bigger names to come (Foxx, McGinley). Once again less could have been more.

Oliver Stone puts himself into a significant cameo too, which was a little arrogant.

The primary cast consist of Al Pacino as Tony, Cameron Diaz as Christina and (despite being billed fifth) Jamie Foxx as Willie.

They all do a very good job, but I felt Diaz was the MVP. She handles tough character roles so well, and plays hard to like characters very well.

Screenplay/Setting/Themes

Not being American myself, I did struggle with the primary theme of American Football. But the characters within are all very well written. I still found the attention to characters and dialogue were done very well.

Some great moments of dialogue come from Tony’s late movie motivational speech to his team which was just amazing script work, and performed by Pacino.

There was a little cliché ‘final 9 seconds’ which goes significantly longer.

While the film does glorify the game, it also strongly shows the dangers of the game with several characters getting horrible injuries during proceedings (Cap and Shark).

One part I particularly disliked was the ‘farewell to Tony’ over the end credits, it felt a little on the nose and out of place from the rest of the film.

Score/Soundtrack

There are many popular songs that play within the film, especially during the many gameplays. Some of the songs were a little ‘racially inappropriate’ – especially given todays progressive outlook.

Overall

Despite the very American nature of the film, I still enjoyed this quite a bit. Pacino does a solid job as the main role. I found Foxx’s character hard to like at times, and in certain scenes he feels like a completely different character. Had he played this role in 2024, he would have been billed second, or maybe first – and I think this might even be hidden racism of the time? This gets a recommend from me.

3.5/5