Oliver Stone’s (Wall
Street: Money Never Sleeps) tale of hard knocks football is something I
want to love very badly. It’s a great
story about how fucked up the game is for so many people, there are great
characters like the cocky yet loveable “Steamin’” Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx (Law Abiding Citizen)), there’s great
attitude with an unflattering take on the sport while simultaneously glorifying
it, but all of this is unfortunately destroyed by extraordinarily shitty
editing.
There’s also some miscasting that’s distracting. Al Pacino (The Panic in Needle Park) comes off more like a cranky dad armchair
quarterbacking than an actual head coach for a major football team. With his tiny size you know he never played
the game when he was younger and because he delivers his lines in kind of a
theatrical showy way you don’t believe for a second that he’s really
knowledgeable about the topic.
The other miscast actor is Denis Quaid (The Big Easy) as the Miami Sharks’ star quarterback. He was 45 in real life at the time which is a
little too old for the role. Most
quarterbacks are retired by the time they’re 40. And I know that Quaid’s character is supposed
to be at the end of his career but he just physically looks too old.
Now I could overlook a couple of questionable casting
decisions but what I can’t get past is how Oliver Stone and four fucking
editors (Stuart Levy (Foxcatcher),
Thomas J. Nordberg (U Turn), Keith
Salmon (Lightning in a Bottle),
Stuart Waks (Days of Thunder))
chopped this sonuvabitch up. There are
so many cuts that it’s hard to focus on what’s happening. But then there’s really on the nose shit too
like when Pacino and Foxx are arguing with each other about Foxx’s career there
are shots intercut of the sky clouding up quickly building towards a storm. Get it?
Their relationship is hitting a rough patch you dolts. Or when Foxx gets put in as quarterback for
the first time he gets so nervous that he throws up on the field and the film
cuts to a sped-up aerial shot of the stadium with the camera shaking all over
the place, plus fifteen other various things.
Whoa this is some crazy shiiiiit!
You think the picture can’t possibly keep up this frantic pace for two
and a half hours but fuck me, it somehow does.
I mean each individual shot is good and actually nicely setup and
everything but when they’re strung together like someone dumped all the footage
into a meat grinder it becomes a chaotic viewing experience (in a bad way).
Add in the fact that the NFL didn’t want to have anything to
do with this movie so the filmmakers had to use fake team names and that makes
the whole piece feel illegitimate and grimier. Plus several characters get shortchanged and
could’ve even had their own film like linebacker Luther Lavay (Lawrence Taylor
(Shaft (2000))) who’s one injury away
from paralysis but keeps on playing because how the hell else is he gonna
support his family? This isn’t LL Cool
J’s best work either (he did the more fun, although equally outrageous, giant
killer shark movie Deep Blue Sea the
same year). You put all this together and
you definitely start to have more problems than you want.
But the weird thing is this could be the most realistic
football film ever made. All the shit
about the doctors not being forthcoming with medical results because of
pressure from the team owner, players putting their lives on the line because
they desperately want to reach a quota so they can earn their bonus, coaches
dealing with cocky albeit talented players, drug and alcohol abuse, painkiller
dependence, immense stress to perform and win, objections over the future
direction of the team and etc. The
picture covers a lot of ground which is impressive. It just does it in the messiest way possible.
I dunno guys. Any Given Sunday is flashy and certainly
entertaining all the way through. There
aren’t lulls that the picture gets caught in, it simply doesn’t have time with
so many storylines. All the shit off the
field is definitely better than any of the real football playing, but all the
best composed and prettiest shots are of the dudes out on the gridiron doin’
their thang.
This is a tough one.
I do love it but it’s kinda fuckin’ annoying too.
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