On December 22, 1999, Warner Bros. released the Oliver Stone-directed NFL drama “Any Given Sunday” into theaters, where it surpassed $100 million worldwide. The original Hollywood Reporter review is below:

Oliver Stone is one of the most important war actors in the movies, so it’s only natural that he would turn his attention to the sport’s gladiators, the professional football players. Any Sunday The result is a film full of cynicism that chokes on pretentious images and yet subscribes to many of the myths surrounding the sport. In any case, Stone disagrees on almost every topic the film addresses, and beyond that he lets his point of view be drowned in gripping action and turbo-charged editing.

Athletes and men who love sports seem to be the most logical target group Any Sundaybut even they can’t be blamed for shying away from the visual assault. With Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz and a number of well-known actors as well as former football greats such as Jim Brown and Lawrence Taylor. Any Sunday can expect a strong first quarter. But as the clock runs out, the crowd may have dwindled.

The film follows the fictional Miami Sharks midseason as an injury to star quarterback “Cap” Rooney (Dennis Quaid) threatens their playoff hopes. The team’s surprise savior is Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx), a third-street quarterback who tends to cut back on his lunch during games. Willie throws a few touchdowns, wins a few games and, as the film goes, gains instant fame as a music video star and national magazine cover boy.

The question of who will start once Cap recovers from his injury becomes an ongoing battle between long-time head coach Tony D’Ama (Pacino) and the ruthless team owner Christina Pagniacci (Diaz), who, after taking over the team from her father inherited, is determined to manage it with an unsentimental view of the end result.

Along the way, topics such as race, ego, sports medicine, college recruiting, media excess, female groupies, performance clauses in players’ contracts, and bitter divisions within the team itself are touched upon. It’s no surprise that modern sports suffer from these and other problems. But that a poor team would experience all of these problems in less than half a season is far-fetched.

And Stone, acting like he’s uncovered a vast conspiracy, makes these points with the subtlety of a power tool. In case anyone in the audience doesn’t understand, Stone then leads us into boozy conversations between the coach and his defensive coordinator (Brown) about the old days and the new ways that they so dislike.

There is no area of ​​professional football where Stone and fellow writers John Logan and Daniel Pyne don’t see greedy, self-centered misconduct. But in the film’s heartbreaking climax, as the Sharks push for a potential game-winning touchdown in the playoffs, the film revisits all the legends of childhood: the Knute Rockne-esque locker room speech, the old clichés about being a man and the importance of being a man teams.

The film’s best moments take place in the trenches, when sweating, bloodied men beat each other a few feet above the ground. Stone amplifies the sound effects until the viewer can almost feel the brutal, concussive blows. But the law of diminishing returns applies here too, as apparently half of the film’s 160 minutes are devoted to warfare.

But despite all this superficial excitement, the film never delves deeply into its characters. Insights are part of freshman psychology: Tony is driven by the early loss of his father; Willie never became his father’s son; Christina strives to be the son her father never had.

And as soon as you see the orthopedist Dr. If you see the feel-good teams of James Woods, the sensitive internist of Matthew Modine, or the hard-nosed linebacker of Lawrence Taylor determined to pad his stats, you know who these people are and nothing ever changes and nothing will change revealed than before impressions.

The cinematography by Salvatore Totino and the production design by Victor Kempster are eye-catching. But in the end it’s too much of a good thing. — Kirk Honeycutt, originally published December 20, 1999