An amalgamation of ideas, characters, and pacing, Any Given Sunday breaks cliches while also reveling in them, proving to be one of the most interesting and frustrating football movies ever made, and a perfect echo to Oliver Stone's ego in itself.
The cast is diverse, amazing and frustrating at the same time. This seems to be the running motif with all of Oliver Stone’s films after Natural Born Killers. Jamie Foxx gives a breakout performance, and leaves no question as to why he became a star after it. Al Pacino is his Pacino-iest in this, and while this may not be very different than his normal shtick, damn is it entertaining. As Foxx jettisons fast toward super stardom, devolving him into a shell of what he once was as newly obtained power tends to corrupt, he loses his way. The cutthroat ice queen of Cameron Diaz reminds me of when she gravitated toward interesting, out-of-the-box performances before she decided to voice Shrek movies and participate in unfunny c-grade comedies for the rest of her career.
The conclusion of the film tends to abandon all of the character arcs it sets up in the previous 90 mins, which is supremely disappointing, attempting to wrap up everyone in a nice bow with changes in personality, relationships and motivations, which feels tacked on and lazy. Regardless, the film’s first two acts, despite the frustrating edits where Oliver Stone aggressively wafts his own farts at the screen. The film still stuck the landing for me, and tries a lot harder than most football films tend to do, and though it plucks heavily from the same football films it's trying to separate itself from, there was enough here to leave me engaged throughout. (7.5/10)
