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Graeme Tuckett is a contributing writer for Stuff to Watch.
OPINION: When Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday landed in 1999 it hit like a bomb. Or at least, it blew me away, but I was alone at a daytime session, in Wellington’s old Hoyts Manners Mall multiplex.
Twenty-four years later, I still believe there has never been a sports movie as spectacular as this. This film is a beast that never found the audience it deserved and left the critics of the day struggling to describe what they had seen. On Rotten Tomatoes, Any Given Sunday is sitting at a rotten 52%. And frankly, that’s ridiculous.
Any Given Sunday is a sprawling film. The story was stitched together from three different scripts that had landed on Stone’s desk, with ideas from sports biographies thrown in. Stone boasted that although the film was a fiction, everything in it had occurred within some professional American sports team.
At the heart of the film is an ageing, fading, alcoholic coach. As played by Al Pacino, Tony D. is a legend of football, with a championship ring he never gets bored of mentioning, but he has lost the respect of the locker room. The results aren’t coming, Tony’s tactics are tired and a new generation of players are trying to catch a break.
Tony’s quarterback is a 38-year-old veteran who is feeling every injury he’s ever had. When one more catastrophic sacking forces “Cap” Rooney off the field – and his second stringer is also destroyed before he can throw a pass, the ball is tossed to a last reserve – and Any Given Sunday can really start to find its direction.
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Al Pacino’s work in Any Given Sunday might be the last Pacino performance you’d call one of his absolutely immortal roles.
Stone threw the sink at this film. With Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Natural Born Killers, Wall Street and JFK on his CV – plus writing credits on everything from Scarface to Midnight Express, Stone was a massive name with a reputation for swinging for the fences with every project.
To make his sports-movie-to-end-them-all, Stone recruited an ensemble that included Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, James Woods, LL Cool J, Matthew Modine, with veterans Ann-Margret and Charlton goddamn Heston.
Pacino is still appearing in good films and has one of the most illustrious CVs in film, but his work in Any Given Sunday might be the last Pacino performance you’d call one of his absolutely immortal roles. Pacino leaves everything on the floor and, by the end, you’re convinced you have seen a swansong that no one else – not even Stone’s second-choice De Niro – could have delivered. Tony’s last locker-room speech is legendary.
Around Pacino, everybody is great, with the comparatively raw Foxx and Diaz especially impressive. Cinematographer Salvatore Totino was handed his first feature film credit and paid Stone back by shooting every game like it was the D-Day landing in Saving Private Ryan.
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Dennis Quaid and James Woods are among the impressive ensemble assembled for Any Given Sunday.
Any Given Sunday is a brash, crass, brawling and unrepeatable film. It is not the “meat head burlesque” one reviewer called it, but it sure ain’t subtle. And of all the Hollywood movies of the last 30 years or so, there’s not many I’d like more to see on a big screen again. Preferably with a crowd.
Any Given Sunday is available on iTunes, Google Play and YouTube. Stone’s “director’s cut” is only on DVD and Blu-Ray (available to rent from Alice’s, Auteur House and Aro Video). It is five minutes shorter – and even better.
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