Sacrifice. Live your life. Pay the price, on Any Given Sunday

I have always remembered the end of the movie “The Longest Yard”. The ending which lasted forever, and which, for most of us, has caused that movie to be called the best movie about football that was ever made.

Until now.

Any Given Sunday, an Oliver Stone movie, has replaced The Longest Yard as the best football movie ever made. It could well be the best SPORTS movie ever made.

Oliver Stone is more known for political movies. Long pastiches of political rhetoric, delving into the past and finding hidden secrets about life based on historical figures. This movie, while having nothing to do with history as we know it, follows the same path.

Al Pacino plays the coach of the Sharks, a football team that has, in the past, been good, but never great. He is hindered, and, in a way, assisted by, the new owner and manager of the Sharks, played by Cameron Diaz, who is not interested in assisting Pacino because of the past. Pacino had taken parts of her father away that she felt had been hers, and she has never forgiven, or forgotten that fact. She makes him pay for every little thing he gets, regardless of whether it will help the team or not.

Included in this mix are an old quarterback, played by Dennis Quaid, a new quarterback, played by Jamie Foxx, and assorted other players, coaches and team doctors, all with their own agendas, all with their own plans.

As each of the characters move through this film, the past that they have had together and the future that may not be show in everything they say and do. Ann-Margaret, as the mother, at one point talks about football as the game that has taken her husband, her daughter, her youth, and has left her alone. Cameron Diaz sees it as a chance to prove herself to her dead father in a way she never had in life. Al Pacino wants to go back to where he never was, and forward to where he never thinks he will be. And each of them have fed off of the others while trying to get what they want, causing the pain that they are having to pay for now.

I have never watched a movie before where, (especially in a football movie), I felt like both standing and cheering and breaking down and sobbing at the same moment. I have never, ever watched a film that has moved me during the last 30 minutes, kept me so glued to the screen that I couldn’t even go to the bathroom because I would miss something, made me think I knew the ending and then threw me such a punch that I literally gasped for breath. (Do you think I like this movie? Is it obvious?)

Some of the (most of the) opinions in this category have the same feelings about this movie. Either they feel that it has great cinematography and a poor plot, or it has a great plot and poor cinematography. Weak female characters, few redemptive characters, etc.

I think they’re all wrong. This movie doesn’t show you characters, it shows you people. People who have dealt with an admittedly difficult, demanding, expensive and chew you up and throw you away sport and how it has not only affected their lives, but also has changed their world. Why they turned out like they did is in direct correlation to what this sport has done to them, and what they have done to the sport.

This movie isn’t for people who think that football players are perfect. It shows every imperfection in a game riddled with scandal, drugs, lies and sex as if through a magnifying glass. And it makes us see that the reason behind the scandal, etc., is the glory heaped on the players by the public, the press, and other athletes. It doesn’t show the athletes as heroes. It shows them as scarred, bitter warriors with problems caused both by themselves and others. It shows them as real. And that, after all, is what makes a great movie and a great story. Not heroes. Not villains. But average people who you can both love and hate, warts and all. Because that is what the world is made of.