'Any Given Sunday' revisit

Originally written the week of Feb. 4th/04
Rating: ***1/2 out of ****

Every year it seems that when I watch the Superbowl I get an urge to watch Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday”, and this year was no exception. While I am not a football fan by any stretch (I only watch the Superbowl for the beer and food with my friends), I personally love the film. As goes with Spike Lee’s “He Got Game”, I think “Any Given Sunday” goes down as one of the most underrated and under-appreciated sports films, and yet it should be up with the best.

When I first heard that Oliver Stone was doing a take on professional football, I did not know what to expect. What I got was an aesthetic thrill, as well as a great social and political commentary on the game of football. Stone presents football to us in a way which we never seen before. Instead of the standard in game shots, we have steady cams running right along with the players, and in some instances, the camera is actually strapped onto player’s bodies, just to get the right effect. For the film, Stone worked with Cinematographer Salvatore Totino and Editor Thomas J. Nordberg of Stone’s other films “U-Turn”, and his upcoming “Alexander”. These men help give Stone that signature look that has become synonymous with his films. The fast cutting, the splicing of different footage or sequences or sounds into a scene to build its intensity. For example, we may hear a rumbling of Buffalo stampeding while the players run in slow motion across the field. My favorite sequence in the film involves Jamie Foxx at Al Pacino’s house to have dinner and there is an old Gladiator film on TV. The two get into an argument, and as the argument escalates, we are cutting more rapidly between shots of the argument and scenes of battles from the Gladiator film. This symbolizes how both men are gladiators of their time and both battle in different ways – and are more similar then one might see at a first glance.

I love the aspect that the story is shown from. It’s not a film about the game of football; it’s about the life of football. We see everything from the game itself, to the relationships off the field between the players and their families, to the politics between owners, managers and coaches, to the insecurities and sometimes-bitter rivalries between players.

For a subject matter that would seem to be out of the realm of Stone’s usual hits, he presented it with a grace and ease as if he’d done it many times before. In many ways, the battles, relationships and hierarchy of professional sports is not worlds away from those of the military – making Stone more suited for this kind of film than one might think – considering his films ‘Platoon’, ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ and ‘Heaven & Earth’.