Review – Any Given Sunday

A long time ago, back when I was in grad school, I encountered a group of drunken frat boys outside a bar. Two or three of them had one of their brethren pinned up against a car, and they were loudly trying to persuade him to do something (or not to do something; I wasn’t exactly clear which). “Does honor not live forever?” one of the guys kept screaming at his buddy. The feeling I got listening to these intoxicated idiots talk about “honor” is the same feeling I had after watching this movie. Oliver Stone seems to get more frantic with every new production, which means that this one spends a considerable amount of time bordering on hysteria. Somewhere behind an endless parade of amateurish editing and other visual rah-rah is the story of pampered, overpaid glory boy football stars, their corporate taskmasters, various hangers-on, and how hard the whole crowd has it. The intense, overwhelming male bonding ultimately comes across as gay in a really unpleasant, dysfunctional way. The cast, including Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz, Jamie Foxx (in a rare non-comedic role, or at least this time around he’s intentionally not being funny), and a galaxy of other supporting-cast stars never have much of a chance against Stone’s relentless, heavy-handed direction. And to top it all off, the conspiracy nonsense from JFK continues to linger, showing up in odd places such as the logos of opposing teams and the numerological significance of scores (for example, watch to see just how many times games end up at 17 to 21 at one point or another). See if desperate