I enjoyed Any Given Sunday, even though some things
were overdone. The sound effects during the football scenes were
too much -- they were amplified to make every collision sound
like a train wreck and sharpened to make it sound like bones were
cracking with every hit. It was just too much. Some selections of
music were over just over the top too -- although they made a
point very clearly, I found the couple of rap songs about "niggas"
this and "niggas" that uncomfortable and offensive.
I did get a kick out of all the little cameo appearanes by
many of my generation's football icons. For example, Unitas and
Butkis were opposing coaches. Jim Brown was strangely
marginalized, even though he was on screen quite a bit. Lawrence
Taylor acquitted himself very well in a large role, and has a
really funny scene where he enjoins the coach to judge him on his
whole career, not just recent actions -- the irony of that almost
made me laugh out loud.
Charleton Heston and Ann Margret did their little parts
very well too. He plays the emporer of the league, and she a sad,
drunk, rich lady, which was hard to watch. But that is one of the
themes -- everything about football is hard to watch. Pacino's
sad and haggard countenance throughout played to that theme very
well too. A review on NPR the other morning brought up the fact
that Stone may have a problem with women, as every female is
either a harpy or a harlot, but there was one woman who played a
noble role (don't know her name).
Even though this movie is cliched to death, aspects were
overdone, and some of the settings just didn't work (the big game
was played in a small arena that looked like an arena-football
stadium!)it was fun. It's 3 hours long though, so maybe only
those with an interest in football would sit through it.
