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Rated: R; Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama; With: Jamie Foxx, Al Pacino and Dennis Quaid

When you get old in life, things get taken from you,'' intones Al Pacino as Tony D'Amato, the beleaguered head coach of the Miami Sharks. In fact, a sense of loss permeates Oliver Stone's gridiron drama Any Given Sunday, which depicts a team, and a national pastime, in transition. Lamenting a day when teamwork and loyalty were the game's stock in trade, D'Amato finds himself under attack by the Sharks' new bottom-line-minded general manager, Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz), and his new starting quarterback, Willie Beaman (Jamie Foxx), a backwoods benchwarmer-turned-arrogant young turk.

As usual with Stone, there are excesses galore: of style, symbolism (the arena-warrior metaphor, already overworked on the big screen, seems even more so on video, especially in the wake of Gladiator), subplots, and, especially in one (literally) eye-popping case, gore. Despite Sunday's trenchant take on today's sports-industrial complex, tradition wins out, as D'Amato teaches the young'uns a lesson. An almost quaint resolution, especially coming from the iconoclastic director. But then, this is the product of Stone the wistful football fan, not Stone the postmodern paranoiac. B+

[BOX]

WHAT WE SAID THEN: ''...the film's cumulative effect is as exhausting as it is exciting.'' B (#520, Jan. 7, 2000) -- Owen Gleiberman

[BOX]

Any Given Sunday 1999 WARNER 157 MINUTES RATED R ALSO ON DVD


Posted Sep 08, 2000
 

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