Any Given Sunday

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.