For a time, I considered Oliver Stone one of the best directors out. But after JFK, Stone’s movies became exceedingly worse as his obvious dim view of life and everything around it became more and more grim. The stories he was making were just incredibly pretentious and simply not entertaining. Before long, it was embarrassing even trying to defend his artistic merit or temperament. As we come to the present, his latest entry of ANY GIVEN SUNDAY is probably his best film in years, but it’s still lacking in some of the essentials. Ultimately, it’s way too long with too many quick MTV style edits that are nothing short of annoying. Too many characters are thrown into the mix also, some hardly even developed. Stone’s then overuse of obvious symbolism and unnecessary arty footage that has no point, except to look cool, is like watching literal masturbation all over the screen.

      Oliver clearly hasn’t given up his bleak world outlook yet either. A strong pessimistic and negative attitude dominates the majority of ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, and is frankly the biggest detractor. Yet in the last 30 minutes, Stone shows a craftsmanship and optimism that he hasn’t in a long time. The story becomes rock solid as the characters finally start to work together. The editing is tight and the instrumental score is fixed and intense, while the stupid rap/metal score is thankfully dropped. This section saves the film and why ANY GIVEN SUNDAY still ranks above most. Now if only the rest of the movie could’ve been this way, right? Yes, if only.