Review of Any Given Sunday (Special Edition Directors Cut)

Introduction

This is a movie with a lot of American Football in it. You may be cynical if it`s not quite your thing, but it`s not just about the sport. There are underlying themes here that everyone will be familiar with, and this is what makes it interesting. The characters, the plot, and the music all work well together. But you don`t need to understand the sport because American football is used as the backdrop to look at the way the sport affects business, players, team owners, the media and everyone else involved. It`s a very glamourous sport with a lot at stake.

Al Pacino plays Tony D’Amato, the passionate and experienced coach of the Miami Sharks who won two championships in a row, a long time ago. Now the Sharks are on a losing streak, have low attendance and have aging players. He`s under pressure from the team owner, Christina Pagniacci (played by Diaz), who understands the modern game and wants to succeed in making money ahead of anything else. Add to this the rising stardom of the Sharks rookie Quarterback, Willi Beamen, who pushes against D`Amato and you get fireworks. The landscape of the modern game has well and truly changed.

Then there are torn loyalties in the team between the players. There are team players, and there are individuals who don`t seem to know how to play together. This leads to friction and high emotions too as they all just want to play, win the games, and earn money while overcoming the odds. They play football with full bone crunching contact which Oliver Stone captures with authenticity. There`s a great cast here in Quaid, Pacino, Diaz, Foxx, Modine, Lauren Holly and the rest. You get the impression that these roles belong to them, they act with conviction and this helps to keep this story of the old traditions and the new modern game believable.

Can you believe that there were up to five cameras shooting all at the same time? There`s so much footage that it`s simply stunning when you think about the logistics and the technical prowess involved in getting all of this put together for the final cut. The camerawork is top notch, they rigged the footballers with a camera as well for their point-of-view on the field and this adds to the excitement. The editing too is well done, showing good pace and not a dull moment in sight. The climactic game still gets me excited and I`ve seen this movie a few times already!

Video

The anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer to DVD is exceptionally good. It`s something which definitely stands out a mile when you play it for the first time. No signs of compression/artifacting were noticable and the print is crisp and very sharp. The colours were vibrant and very well reproduced with solid blacks in the right places. Brilliant contrast and balance throughout, it all adds to the vibrancy and excitement of the film.

Audio

There`s good use of music and sound throughout and this helps keep the momentum going. Sometimes the cheering of the crowd can be quite loud that you can miss some of the dialogue, so I had to put on subtitles sometimes just to get what was being said. The bone crunching knocks and tumbles are loud and clear, putting you right in the middle of the action. Pump up the volume, it`s all good!

Features

Two discs, two commentary tracks, isolated music score, Full Contact: The Making of Any Given Sunday, trailers, three music videos, deleted/extended scenes, outtakes, stills gallery, and DVD-ROM content, have I missed anything out? All this comes with animated menus which are pretty slick. There`s so much on this Director`s Cut that it`ll make your head spin. Stone`s commentary is particularly interesting and insightful, not only talking about the shots in the film, but he talks about other aspects surrounding the making of the film, the budgets, the issues he had with the NFL and a lot more besides.

The second commentary track with the cast and crew is pretty good though it should be re-labelled the Jamie Foxx commentary track. He gives his perspective on the movie and what he did plus production commentary and it makes for interesting listening (some of it a little naughty), though he doesn`t talk constantly.

The DVD-ROM is exceptionally good. We get the original theatrical movie website, which is packed to the gills with info on the cast, crew, production and mini games (create your own Shark`s play). Scoreboard gives you essays and reviews on Touchdowns and Fumbles and online reviews of Any Given Sunday. Training Camp contains a Sports Trivia Challenge, Script to Screen and Virtual Edit Suite. The Trivia Challenge game is fun if you know your NFL stuff (I don`t so I was booed off). Script to Screen just shows the various stages of script to final cut via rough cut for two scenes. You then get to watch both versions of the film in this form alongside the script.

Finally the Virtual Edit Suite....I`d tell you about it if it ever worked on my PC, but I had technical problems with it. :-( I was so looking forward to this part too, it looks good! Apart from the technical hitch, these two discs really do add up to a very rich film. I ate it all up!

Conclusion

I would definitely recommend this movie as something to buy and keep. I`m not an American football fan since it`s never really interested me in the slightest, but this didn`t detract from my enjoyment. It`s easy to dismiss this movie without seeing it, as just another sports movie. But it`s not. This really does have so much more and shouldn`t be underestimated in the slightest. The soundtrack is slammin` and it`s something I`d like to get my hands on, music is everywhere in this film and is well integrated. Great picture quality, fantastic sound and tons of stuff on two discs make this is an aural and visual fest. If you have a DVD-ROM player you`re going to get even more stuff to look at and play with. Oliver Stone and Warner Bros have produced a very entertaining film in `Any Given Sunday` and it`s well worth getting!