Review of Any Given Sunday (1999) by The3Academysins — 02 Mar 2019

A poorly written, terribly executed, overly long, and over the top melodrama, Any Given Sunday is a football film that was lukewarm at the time of it's release, and one that has rotted horribly. This movie is over-confident in how good it is, and it makes many mistakes. For one, the same shots are reused and super imposed over each other time and time again, and this comes off as lazy rather than as meaningful repetition. Second, numerous title drops come off as over indulgent rather than organic. Third, this movie compares itself to Ben-Hur, and even portraying football as war does not even put this movie in the same ballpark as Ben-Hur. Fourth, the acting is all over the place, with some decent performances sprinkled in, but most scenes are so over the top and unbelievable that I found myself thinking this was a comedy.

There are many better football films out there than Any Given Sunday. I highly encourage you to watch those instead. The only reason this film gets a 2 instead of a 0 is because there are some good performances (Al Pacino's speech at the climax, for instance) and the ensemble cast does mesh well on the rare occasion they are allowed to interact with each other instead of worshipping football as some holy transcendent ideal without ever making the argument for it.