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Any Given Sunday
Warner Bros.


6.7

based on 32 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 15 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for strong language and some nudity/sexuality

Starring Al Pacino, Dennis Quaid, James Woods, Lauren Holly, Ann-Margret, and Cameron Diaz

Professional football provides the action-packed backdrop of Oliver Stone's look at contemporary society through the dynamic prism of professional sports. (Warner Brothers)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Daniel Pyne John Logan Oliver Stone
DIRECTED BY:	Oliver Stone
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 5, 2000 Video: September 5, 2000 Theatrical: December 22, 1999
RUNNING TIME:	162 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

There's scarcely a scene in which the actors, action and sound track aren't cranked up to maximum intensity.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The film's cumulative effect is as exhausting as it is exciting.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

If this rousing, technically dazzling movie doesn't get you going, then you probably didn't like football to being with.

USA Today Mike Clark

Though there are helmets deeper than this movie, you do have to admire the level of screen showmanship .

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

A 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.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack

Features convincing, often soaring, performances by a savvy cast that must have gotten adrenaline shots administered by Stone himself.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

A kinetically charged gridiron drama that is enormous fun to watch.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The 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.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It'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.

Film.com Sean Means

Big, bold, brash and occasionally brilliant.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

The director has created a slick, newer-than-new, faster-than-fast entertainment to end all entertainments.

Variety Todd McCarthy

(Stone's) most accessible and purely enjoyable film in years.

TV Guide Steve Simels

Stone handles his huge ensemble cast extremely well.

Film.com Tom Keogh

The kind of minor work that may very well speak greater volumes about (Stone's) thoughts and feelings right now than another masterpiece would.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Far too long, but its rambunctiousness is engaging, propelled by Stone's virtuosic quick-cutting.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A testosterone- and cliché-fueled epic that will have some hoping for sudden death as it stumbles toward the three-hour mark.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

While 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.

Newsweek David Ansen

Stone creates such a sizzling, raunchy, vital world that the cliches almost seem new.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Though intermittently entertaining, it's too long and rarely insightful in new or meaningful ways.

Salon.com Mary Elizabeth Williams

Stone 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.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

This 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.

Time Richard Schickel

Ends up less than the sum of its many, often interesting parts.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

As always with Stone, the film has some gritty performances and a certain likable audacity.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

Crammed with interesting ideas, visuals, and people, but Stone buries it all in a s--tstorm of technique.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Just 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.

TNT RoughCut Tom Cappello

Oliver Stone must learn that edgy photography does not substitute for a story with substance.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Like a visual concussion.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's about as deep as electronic white noise.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

For 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.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

By the time the manic camera slows down to reveal the back stories of the characters, everyone's motives are either moot or redundant.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

A football epic on performance enhancers that may be more flagrantly flawed, more shockingly predictable and just plain cornier than its rickety predecessors.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

A football film made by a man who apparently has seen little of the game outside of movies, and not very good ones at that.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.7 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

King F. gave it a4:
The movie starts out with a bang, but falls apart toward the end due to too many plot threads, which leaves you with a lack of understanding of most, if not all, of the characters. It doesn't help that the football action plays more like Madden '06 than a real football game. And this is yet another Pacino performance that he just seems to be mailing in. That still means capability, but you expect more from Pacino than "capable".

jeff f. gave it a0:
The MTV style of editing made me sick. Even the football scenes were badly done.If not for the Blair Witch project this would be the worst movie of 99.

Kal gave it an8:
This is a great movie, it keeps you infront of the screen till the end of it..it's a good story and great actors.

Maxwell S. gave it a 9:
Incredibly complex with a dozen real characters who's emotion and depth smashes from the screen just as much as the hard hitting music and bone crushing football scenes. This is a true movie.

Jeremy gave it a 7:
Like many of the recent Oliver Stone films, his self-indulgence and tendancy to throw everything and the kitchen sick, when just the kitchen sink is needed, doesn't overshadow the strong material that provides the forefront.

Yoon C. gave it a 7:
An over-the-top Stone film about football that's notable for exploring the politics as well as the athletics of the sport. Stone exposes the professional sports world as one of excess, rage, delirium, and stampeding egos. It's a hormone pumped empire of tycoons and well-fed and groomed, overpriveleged stable beasts who however face annihilation thru self-destructive excess, the violent ruthlessness of the sport itself, and exploitation based on dog-eat-dog competition and racial bias. Often ugly and putrid, but always fascinating, on occasion even eloquent as satire and celebration of the American past-time. A classic? Maybe, maybe not but a victory of sorts.

Luke H. gave it a 10:
I don't like Oliver Stone but his film techniques simply enhance the brilliance of this movie. I'm from Australia and may not know much about American football but I don't think that matters in a movie like this. You can't watch it for the football scenes. You have to watch it for the intense story and ridiculously good acting. This movie is incredible and if you don't like you're a fool.

Any Given Sunday Warner Bros.

Any Given Sunday
Warner Bros.