American Football is another planet as far as I am concerned, first of all, because to me "football" is what they call "soccer", and this whole crazy enthusiasm beyond the superbowl is something beyond my understanding, but with this movie, i definitly could understand it better, as just an extension of the notion of gladiators and ancient battlefields.
Coach Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino) is a legendary coach of the fictional Miami Sharks, four years ago he won the Panthon Cup with the help of an All Star cast of players, "Cap" Rooney (Dennis Quaid), J-man Washington (LL Cool J), and "Shark" Lavey (Lawrence Taylor) the captain of the Sharks Defense Taylor being a real legandary football player with the New York Giants, who changed defense forever.
Life is not that easy for coach D'Amato lately, because his team is not doing so well, they lost their last four games, "Cap" health is a concern, and he has many management conflicts with the team owner Christina Pagnacci (Cameron Diaz), who took over after her dad, and D'Amato close friend died, and has trouble to prove herself in a man dominated world of men owners.
During a particulary difficult games D'Amato loses both his quarterbacks, forcing him to give a chance to the third Wille Beamen (Jamie Foxx) a talented player who never got an actual chance to prove himself do to a series of misfortunate events , Beamen doesnt only allow the team to win the games but turns into a true sport's world superstar, causing D'Amato's anger for his tenedancy to change the playing tactics on the fly as he pleases, and getting away with it.
Beamen's growing stardom gets to his head, while he starts to openly criticize his team and their way of living, and showing disrespect for the whole Coaching team, and earning him Cap's rivalry who works his butt off to get back to his initial place as the team's star quarterback
D'Amato deals with this new problem, plus his own alcoholism problems, plus his estranged family, and plus his addiction to hookers, while managing a conflictual relatonship with the media, and it's powerful talkshow hosts, this review could very well be about Al Pacino's performance as D'Amato because he gives a masterful one, but he played a somewhat similar role in "Heat" and we spoke about that, so while d'Amato is dealing with all these issues, the team continues to win thanks to "steamin" Beamen successful plays, and as the team heads to their biggest game, what will D'Amato do to manage the chaos around him, and to revive his legend, or is it just that he is past his primie, caught up in a world he no longer understands.
This movie is about the crazy and fascinating world of football and the people who revolve around it, it's partly written and directed by Oliver Stone, who made such small movies as "Platoon" or "JFK", and being a football fan himself, he manages to transcend it into an epical world, where the players are gladiators and the owners and coaches a royal court, with undless power battles, and where the lives of the players themselves are not much diffrent from their real lives, and it also shows the ruthless world of owners and politicians around it, and how one could get eaten alive if he doesn't pay much attention.
The confrontations of coach D'Amato and Christina are epical, she tries her best to hold up to him although it's hard with a man with such a status and an authority, who nevers allows anybody to tell him what to do, the evolution of the character of Beamen is also worth watching and even the sweet decline of the once Legend Cap Rooney played beautifully by Dennis Quaid is a subplot strenghtening the whole movie.
So this movie basically covers the world of football from all it's sides, and without being long or boring, this movie has the same rythm as a superbowl, with the game itself, the side entertainment, the ads, the party athmosphere, but don't let it unfocus you, because as we learn through Coach D'Amato's wisdom, this game is about more then winning, making money, or being the star, it's about the passion and the trust between ten men who will throw themselves into the harm's way, because they believe you'd do the same for them, and that's a beatiful lesson, from a beautiful movie.
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