Any Given Sunday (1999)

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.

JM Classic Performance Dissection : Al Pacino as Vincent Hanna

The year is 95 and the perspectives tempting, "the first film ever to star Pacino and DeNiro", well matter of fact, both of them were in "the godfather II" but in diffrent time periods, which means they never met on screen, The director was Michael Mann, one of the biggest unsung heroes of directing in hollywood, and the movie was called simply "Heat"

First of all, you can say anything about Pacino, but almost no actor is that intense, and the intensity of Pacino drives his performances, of course so many to number, and generally great ones, and Pacino plays Vincent Hanna, an LAPD crime fighting unit boss, who has to deal with a team of hyper professionals lead by the character played by DeNiro.

But not only that, because he plays a detective who is possessed by his work, as maybe he sees in it a form of gratifiction, or a way to let his primary hunter instincts at work, and all that while working out a third or fourth marriage already on the verge of the D valley, and a teenage suicidal daughter, who is not even his daughter.

As the film evloves, the hunter becomes the hunted, and a lot of mirroring between the two charaters happens, which leads to one of the most famous scenes in cinema history, Pacino drives this neurotic, brilliant, paternal figure character with his sheer force of wit, and makes us really wish that crime fighters were so dedicated, and uncorruptible.

I think the pacino performance at the time marked everybody who watched it, and many of the film's scene have been copied and pasted all over cinema history, but if there was one thing you can't forget, it's the calm Vincent Hanna in the diner scene, the neurotic Vincent Hanna while dealing with criminals, and of course the satisfied hunter Vincent Hanna while shooting a criminal, and man, It was big !

The Usual Suspects: The guy who looks like Al Pacino

Well this goes back to 1997, my best friend came very excited, because he watched this movie "the usual suspects", and guess what, he told me about the whole plot (and i will never forgive him), and at that time, the usual suspects was "the movie", and for good reasons, everybody who saw it, couldn't believe a story could be so clever, and that the suspense could be held such a long time without failing, and it was a "popular" movie, meaning it was not nerdy.

My friend referred to the star of the movie as "the guy who looks like Al Pacino", well it is arguable that Mr Byrne looks like him, and depends on the haircut, but the Al Pacino of that time was the detective from "heat", and sure Byrne looked like him a bit, we didn't know byrne at the time, and what an introduction ! cold yet touching, calculating yet human, and you keep on suspecting him, and unsuspecting him, until the movie's famous ending, which is now part of the history of cinema

The Movie is about a man called Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey), being investigated by the customs's special agent David Kugan (Chazz Palminteri), and telling him the story of a deal which went wrong, including of pier workers and a ship's crew whome got killed, and the whole ship being blown, Verbal inisists that it is the work of criminal mastermind Kayser Soze, Kugan not believing him, and the whole movie is in flashback mode illustrating what Verbal is telling Kugan about Soze, and trying to find out about his identity/existence amongst a cast of five suspects which come from diffrent ways of life (crime), including Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) who is a serious contender.

Now the star in the movie is it's killer script (academy award winner), but all the cast is terrefic, especiall Byrne, Spacey, and Palmenteri, and it it to say that it has became legendary ever since, the plot is so thick with many very strong subplots that you can't believe it, and Byrne is great in it.

Thirteen years later, the "man who looks like Al Pacino" is still great, and the movie is still enjoyable, and it was the movie which introduced me to Mr Byrne, and for that alone it is worth it !

Jebbiness: 4/5
Byrne's Performance 4/5.