Any Given Sunday (1999)Director: Oliver Stone
Starring: Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, James Woods, Aaron Eckhart, Jim Brown, Lawrence Taylor, LL Cool J, Matthew Modine, John C. McGinley, Charlton Heston
Last week I was looking around Youtube and came across a terrific mash-up of inspirational speeches from movies. Check it out. One of the moments in the clip is Al Pacino's team rev up from Any Given Sunday, a film I haven't seen for a few years. So when Kate had an all day meeting on Sunday it was fresh in my mind.
Aging Miami Sharks coach Tony D'Amato (Pacino) is under pressure. His team has lost three games in a row and look like missing the playoffs. The franchises fiesty young president and owner Christina Pagniacci (Diaz), who inherited the team from her father, a good friend of Tony's, is starting to think that Tony is over the hill. To top it all off in the one game his teams inspirational leader and veteran quarterback Cap Rooney (Quaid) and his second string quarterback both go down with serious injuries. D'Amato has no choice but to throw in unproven third-stringer Willie Beaman (Foxx). Beaman has bounced around a few teams and believes this is probably his last chance to get his career going. With some electrifying individual play Beaman quickly becomes the man of the moment. D'Amato doesn't like him; he's not a team player, he doesn't listen to instruction and quickly loses the respect of his teammates. For Pagniacci though, Beaman represents the future of the Miami Sharks.
Oliver Stone films always have a similar feel to them, whether they concern the world of politics (JFK, Nixon), war (Platoon) or commerce (Wall Street). They are always have an almost mythical feel to them, creating an entire world with a wide web of characters surrounding the one or two central figures. More cynical viewers might consider he has made a career out of making the same film over and over. This time Stone sets his focus on the world of professional sports, and the result is probably the best professional sports movie that I've seen. None of the ideas that Stone chooses to focus on in the film are particularly original or profound if you know anything about professional sports; there is the conflict between generations, between the old way and the new way, between business and sport, between idealists and pragmatists, there is the raging egos and self-promotion, the players risking their own safety and well being in order to play and the corruptible doctors who let them do it. But what Any Given Sunday shows us is that even reasonably cliched and well explored concepts can be really engaging and interesting when they are well written, well directed and performed by a fantastic cast. Stone's films always use huge supporting casts and this one is no exception. The main burden of the film is carried by Pacino, Foxx and Diaz, but great performances from guys like Quaid, Woods, Eckhart, Taylor and Stone regular McGinley (sporting a career worst hairstyle) really flesh out the world.
Like most sports movies, Any Given Sunday is more about what happens off the field than what happens on it. But Stone's treatment of the games themselves is pretty impressive. It's pretty flashy stuff; lots of quick editing, montage, close ups and slow motion. It doesn't capture the strategy of the game at all. There is no way you can follow a play. But while the shooting style neglects the team as a whole, it does capture the moment for the individual. You feel the intensity, the rapidity, the urgency of the moment for the player having to make the decisions. Shooting a sporting contest, particularly a team sport, for the cinema doesn't appear to be an easy thing to do (watch some of the rugby scenes in Clint Eastwood's Invictus to see how even brilliant directors can struggle to capture the magic of a sporting contest) but Stone does a pretty good job with this one.
During a scene in which Willie visits Tony's place for lunch, Tony has Ben Hur playing on his television, the famous chariot racing scene. Stone cuts back to Ben Hur a few times during the scene and at the time I was thinking that there must be some significance to this, he must be trying to say something, create some allusion. This thought was confirmed in a later scene when Charlton Heston appears playing the league commissioner. That being said I couldn't really work out what the allusion was. In the directors commentary on the DVD Stone explains that he was indeed trying to make a meta connection, showing the way that yesterday's rebels become today's establishment. So now when you watch it and Ben Hur comes on you'll know that that is what it means.
Al's motivations speech, known as the 'Peace by Inches' speech, has got to be the best inspirational sporting speech in cinema. I think it even trumps "What are your legs?" "Steel springs" from Gallipoli. It is delivered with that brilliant Pacino mix of gravelly quietness and rage filled yelling. Richard T. Kelly's book Ten Bad Dates With De Niro, a book of alternative movie lists ranks the speech number four in the list entitled "The Mighty Apoplexies of Pacino: Ten Scenes Where 'Shouty Al' Shows Up".
At times this film may verge on being a bit pretentious visually, Stone definitely pushes the envelope a bit with some of his stylistic choices. It doesn't sit alongside Platoon, JFK, Wall Street and Nixon as one of Stone's best films, but it is still very good. Stone has assembled an excellent cast and got great performances out of them. And let's face it, Al Pacino is always worth watching and here he seems to relish not having to play a cop or a criminal. Any Given Sunday is the best professional sports movie I've seen, it takes you into that world of egos and excess and shows you the highs and the lows.
During a scene in which Willie visits Tony's place for lunch, Tony has Ben Hur playing on his television, the famous chariot racing scene. Stone cuts back to Ben Hur a few times during the scene and at the time I was thinking that there must be some significance to this, he must be trying to say something, create some allusion. This thought was confirmed in a later scene when Charlton Heston appears playing the league commissioner. That being said I couldn't really work out what the allusion was. In the directors commentary on the DVD Stone explains that he was indeed trying to make a meta connection, showing the way that yesterday's rebels become today's establishment. So now when you watch it and Ben Hur comes on you'll know that that is what it means.
Al's motivations speech, known as the 'Peace by Inches' speech, has got to be the best inspirational sporting speech in cinema. I think it even trumps "What are your legs?" "Steel springs" from Gallipoli. It is delivered with that brilliant Pacino mix of gravelly quietness and rage filled yelling. Richard T. Kelly's book Ten Bad Dates With De Niro, a book of alternative movie lists ranks the speech number four in the list entitled "The Mighty Apoplexies of Pacino: Ten Scenes Where 'Shouty Al' Shows Up".
At times this film may verge on being a bit pretentious visually, Stone definitely pushes the envelope a bit with some of his stylistic choices. It doesn't sit alongside Platoon, JFK, Wall Street and Nixon as one of Stone's best films, but it is still very good. Stone has assembled an excellent cast and got great performances out of them. And let's face it, Al Pacino is always worth watching and here he seems to relish not having to play a cop or a criminal. Any Given Sunday is the best professional sports movie I've seen, it takes you into that world of egos and excess and shows you the highs and the lows.
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