Any Given Sunday

And I’m sure Mr. Stone will be proudest of when his critics can site this as his Worst Movie Since Natural Born Killers. (I guess that doesn’t really take in much. He’s only made three since that one. Nixon, which was very good, and U-Turn, which I liked, but it seemed more in David Lynch territory. And then, this near travesty.)

Let’s see. Where should we start? I guess I should explain that I’m not a football fan at all. I wanted to see this movie because of Oliver Stone (who can occasionally make a great film), Al Pacino (who seems to be putting in less and less great performances) and Cameron Diaz (who can do no wrong).

This movie starts off with a pretty good football scene. I have to admit that even I was kind of into those scenes. That’s a good thing since they take up just about an hour and 45 minutes of the three hour movie. In fact, the first scene was so long that I was starting to think that there was no story, just football scene after football scene.

So, this is the story of Tony D’Amato (Pacino), the head coach of the Miami Sharks. (Yeah, I get it. Some of the other teams are called the Americans, the Rhinos and the Knights. I guess they couldn’t use the real names, so they just forged their way in.) He’s getting up there in years and some of the higher ups think it’s time for him to quit. His star quarterback, Jack “Cap” Rooney (Dennis Quaid–is he really football player material?) is also getting up there and is starting to kind of fall apart. In fact, he’s taken out in the first game with a really bad back injury and isn’t able to play again until the playoffs. When his second string QB is taken out in the next play he is forced to send in third stringer Willie Beaman (Jamie Foxx). After Beaman pukes on the turf he starts to bring the team to a victory only to be thwarted by his own insolence. (You see, he calls different plays than the coach does. Bad boy.)

Meanwhile, in another movie, Christina Pagniacci (the lovely Ms. Diaz), is trying to own her team a little more than it should be owned. She’s almost coaching from the box. Her father owned the Sharks for a long time and now, since he’s dead, she’s taken over with an iron thumb. Tony hates her. Cap’s not too fond of her. Neither is her mother (Ann-Margaret looking so much older than she did even five years ago in the Grumpy Old Men movies). In fact, she inspires the best line of the whole movie from Charleton Heston, “I seriously believe that woman would eat her young.”

That’s the whole story. Beaman becomes the star QB (of course). He leaves his girlfriend (of course). He makes commercials (of course). Tony tries to put Cap back in. He finds out that his team doctor (James Woods) has been faking test results in order to keep older players in. There’s a younger doctor (Matthew Modine) who wants James stopped. Cap has an evil wife (Lauren Holly) who wants him in that game no matter what. There’s even an over the top sports newsman (John C. McGinley from Office Space and a lot of other Stone films–and doesn’t he look a lot like a young Dabney Coleman?) who makes Willie out to be the biggest story of the year. Of course, of course, of course, of course. There are absolutely no surprises in this movie at all. I guess that’s the biggest surprise. Oliver Stone has made the most predictable movie of his career. At least U-Turn was so weird that you didn’t know what direction it would go next.

And there’s not a lot for any of these actors to do. The only fleshed out characters are Tony and Willie, and even those are pretty cardboard. The rest of the parts could have been played by any unknown actor out of the L.A. restaurant scene. What was Matthew Modine doing here? A favor for Stone? I know what James Woods was doing. He’s always around Stone’s work, so I guess he’s got an excuse. Everyone did a great job, though. Especially Mr. Pacino, who puts in one of his most understated performances in about 10 years. The yelling is actually called for this time and he never once does it over the corpse of a five year old boy. (Such a bad scene from City Hall.)

Now, back to those football scenes. The only problem I had with them was the fact that there was always music playing. Very few times was there only the sounds of the players, which I think makes a better scene. I would much rather hear the cracking of the helmets and the grunting of the players than the synchronized beat of the metal or rap that the music supervisor thought would heighten the experience. It kind of made the otherwise great scenes into Michael Bay music videos. (Which, by the way, it looked like he was helping old Ollie out with some of the direction. What’s up with all the close-ups and moving cameras? I thought I was watching Armageddon again.)

And then there’s the fact that a lot of the time it looks like the actors couldn’t be bothered to be in the same room together. A lot of Cameron’s scenes looked like they had to be filmed during off days of the Being John Malkovich shoot. Very few times is she ever in the same room with Pacino. Or anyone else for that matter, except for Ann-Margaret and Charelton Heston, who weren’t doing anything else, so they could be all over the place at any given time.

And speaking of Mr. Gun Happy, there’s a scene between Tony and Willie at Tony’s house that pretty much sums up the whole movie. When Willie comes over for dinner, Tony is watching Ben Hur. (Get it?) It’s right at the chariot race scene. Lots of guys giving their lives for their sport. Then, for some reason, later in the dinner it goes back to when Ben Hur is on the slave ship. Huh? Did they forget what order the tapes went in? But that’s not important right now. What is important is what I think this movie is actually about. It’s not about football at all. It’s actually about filmmaking.

You see, Oliver Stone is now one of the older statesmen of film. He’s mad that he missed out on being part of the “Film School Generation” that Scorsese and Spielberg were a part of, so he’s going to take his punches at old Hollywood, too. He does this by showing us Ben Hur and having Mr. Heston gallivanting around his new film. But, he doesn’t want his generation, which is now the older generation, to be forgotten. We must learn from the old to get the new. He sees filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky (Pi), Alexander Payne (Election), Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and David O. Russell (Three Kings) horning in on his territory. He wants them to know that he can still make a hip movie. So he puts all of this weird stuff into his movie, lots of cutting, lots of loud music, lots of grainy shots. And he brings Old Hollywood into it, too. In this movie the new only prevail with the recognition and help of the old. (It’s a long shot, but I bet it was on Ollie’s mind.)

Unfortunately, Oliver didn’t really make a hip movie. He made a “hip” movie. There’s a big difference.

And, besides that, he has a lot to learn about football. The teams seem to magically get seven points for their touchdowns. The extra point is mentioned once or twice, but the point is already on the score board.

And he’s got a lot to learn about television. A commercial would never have the line “I keep all the women creamin’” in it.

Not a very good movie. But Mr. Stone may have a bright future at MTV.