ANY GIVEN SUNDAY

(Directed by Oliver Stone. Starring Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz, James Foxx, Dennis Quaid)

NOW THIS is more like it: a flashy, testosterone-drenched, visually extravagant, Oliver Stone-directed two-and-a-half-hour movie about American Football, starring Al Pacino as the team's rugged, single-minded coach . . . let's say I was sold practically before the credits rolled, and was not disappointed in the slightest.

Although your Blow Up correspondent positively drips with sporting blood (I'd watch dwarf-throwing if it was televised), he would be the first to concede that films about sport are almost invariably lamentable affairs. American pro sports tend to provide the only exceptions, but even then the drama is all too frequently diluted by a depressing predictability of plot, as the teams concerned invariably triumph over adversity thanks to the team ethic etc. etc. etc. Any Given Sunday is a shining exception, as dramatically powerful and richly detailed as any movie of its kind in living memory.

Visually, it's a stunner - Stone rummages through his usual repertoire of jump-cuts, side-steps, flashback interruptions, split-screen effects and freeze-frames, and if the results are a bit too uncomfortably MTV-style for purists, it suits the subject matter magnificently. But, ultimately, the movie's biggest strength is Al Pacino's powerhouse performance as the driven head coach of the Miami Sharks, a fading superpower in the middle of a serious slump: Pacino looks and sounds like a man utterly consumed by the game at every single step of the way, an obsessive dynamo who eats, drinks and sleeps football, and will never get it out of his system short of another championship.

A multitude of circumstances have him fraught to breaking point: the team's owner (feisty corporate bitch Diaz) wants him out on his ear if results don't improve, his star quarterback (Dennis Quaid) has just been gruesomely injured in a typically bruising battle, the press are howling for his head, and time is in very short supply. The stand-in quarterback(newcomer Foxx in a stunning performance) steps into the breach and slowly transforms the team's fortunes while attaining

overnight stardom, recording Will Smith-style rap records and pissing off his team-mates with a cocky arrogance that conflicts sharply with Pacino's notions of honour and teamwork - it's at this point that the film ventures into deeper and more socially relevant territory than it really needs to, as the issue of race rears its thorny head, and there are insights into every little detail from physio malpractise to television's nefarious impact.

Further elaboration would dull the film's impact, and I suspect you'll have twigged by this stage if it's not your cup of tea. But as pure sensation-giving, stimulating blockbuster cinema goes, this is an absolute stormer.

HHHHHI