A moview you can watch any day of the week - not just Sundays! (Any Given Sunday (DVD))

Member Name: Flibble

Product:	Any Given Sunday (DVD)
Date:	24/07/01 (175 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: All Star Cast, Great score, Excellent story

Disadvantages: Knowledge of NFL helpfull but not essential, Snapper cases (thanks Warner!)

OK, confession time:

1) I know nothing about American Football

2) I wouldn't have looked near this movie had it not been for the fact that it was on special offer in-store!

Any Given Sunday (directed by Oliver Stone) tells the story of a fictional American Football team coached by the ageing Tony D'Amato, played here by Al Pacino.

As the film starts, we find that this team are struggling badly in the league, and to make matters worse, their star quaterback Jack Rooney (Dennis Quaid) get badly injured, ruling him out of much of the season. As a result of this, D'Amato has to bring in rookie player Willie Beaman to step into this living legends shoes.

To begin with, Beaman has a few rough games, but then it begins to click, he starts winning touchdowns and becoming the hottest property in sports.

So far so good, right - wrong!

D'Amato is under increasing pressure from the clubs owner (played by Cameron Diaz) to win and win big. Fame and money starts to go to Beamens head, so much so that he's no longer a team player, shunned and resented by many of his fellow-players his anger bubbles over into a huge confrontation between D'Amato, Beaman and the club owner.

Essentially a movie about how theres' always someone newer, fresher, better than you ready to take your place - be it the coach, the players or the owners - we follow the fortunes of this team and the influence that the media start to have on the game itself.

The football action itself is well presented, with bone-crunhing sound blasting out of the 5.1 surround track. The music to this movie is also worth a mention, I don't think I've ever heard such an enjoyable music score - crank up the amplifier and enjoy it all!

The film may sound like having a long running time at 2 and a half hours, but this goes suprisingly quickly. The disc is well seperted into chapters too, so navigation t
o favourite/last watched moments is easy too.

If you don't know anything about American Football then don't worry, I didn't (and still don't) know anything about it myself but this didn't detract from my enjoyment from the film.

This DVD comes as a 2-disc set. Due to the long running time of the film we get the main feature on disc one and extra features shown on disc 2. The extras consist of three music videos, a set of deleted scenes with optional commentary from Oliver Stone, a theatrical trailer, a montage of deleted scenes and a cast and crew section. However, my biggest gripe about this package would be the packaging itself! Presented in a Snapper case (like similar Warner releases in the UK) the 'extras' disc is held inside a seperate envelope inside a slip of the packaging - making it very easy to scratch the disc! wake up Warner!

The main movie itself also features a commentary track by Oliver Stone, a commentary track by some of the actors in the movie AND an isolated score track - feature packed I'm sure you'll agree. All these features round of a very well put together package and one I would highly recommend anyone to watch.

Summary: