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88There's scarcely a scene in which the actors, action and sound track aren't cranked up to maximum intensity.
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75It's a close call here. I guess I recommend the movie because the dramatic scenes are worth it. But if some studio executive came along and made Stone cut his movie down to two hours, I have the strangest feeling it wouldn't lose much of substance and might even play better.
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75The characters are hardly original...but Stone puts them into play with his usual fever-pitch gusto, producing what's probably the most heart-pounding gridiron movie ever made.
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75If this rousing, technically dazzling movie doesn't get you going, then you probably didn't like football to being with.
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75A turbocharged and pungently enjoyable take on the sport so many observers see - Stone, of course, included - as a reflection of the darker side of American life.
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75Features convincing, often soaring, performances by a savvy cast that must have gotten adrenaline shots administered by Stone himself.
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75Though there are helmets deeper than this movie, you do have to admire the level of screen showmanship .
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75A kinetically charged gridiron drama that is enormous fun to watch.
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75The film's cumulative effect is as exhausting as it is exciting.
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70Stone handles his huge ensemble cast extremely well.
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70The director has created a slick, newer-than-new, faster-than-fast entertainment to end all entertainments.
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70Big, bold, brash and occasionally brilliant.
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70The kind of minor work that may very well speak greater volumes about (Stone's) thoughts and feelings right now than another masterpiece would.
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70(Stone's) most accessible and purely enjoyable film in years.
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63While the football sequences are carefully constructed, the sensation we get from the blizzard of images and teeth-jarring sound effects is of having our head used as the football.
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63A testosterone- and cliché-fueled epic that will have some hoping for sudden death as it stumbles toward the three-hour mark.
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63Far too long, but its rambunctiousness is engaging, propelled by Stone's virtuosic quick-cutting.
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60Stone creates such a sizzling, raunchy, vital world that the cliches almost seem new.
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58Though intermittently entertaining, it's too long and rarely insightful in new or meaningful ways.
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50As always with Stone, the film has some gritty performances and a certain likable audacity.
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50Stone is an undeniably stylish director, and his talent for conveying intense emotion is well put to use here. But more often Stone's in-your-face technique is as exhausting as his steroid-enhanced players.
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50This energetic and diverting sports soap opera throws a few head fakes in the direction of an iconoclastic examination of the dark side of professional football.
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50Ends up less than the sum of its many, often interesting parts.
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45Crammed with interesting ideas, visuals, and people, but Stone buries it all in a s--tstorm of technique.
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30Just watching the trailer for Oliver Stone's new football epic a few weeks back left me with a grating headache; watching the whole sweaty film practically put me in the ICU.
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30Like a visual concussion.
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30For much of the movie, the kinetic furor of the game sequences helps camouflage the weaknesses of a screenplay that is a mechanically contrived series of power struggles.
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30It's about as deep as electronic white noise.
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30By the time the manic camera slows down to reveal the back stories of the characters, everyone's motives are either moot or redundant.
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30Oliver Stone must learn that edgy photography does not substitute for a story with substance.
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25A football epic on performance enhancers that may be more flagrantly flawed, more shockingly predictable and just plain cornier than its rickety predecessors.
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10A football film made by a man who apparently has seen little of the game outside of movies, and not very good ones at that.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 15
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Mixed: 1 out of 15
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Negative: 2 out of 15
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KingF.4
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7
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LevS.9