With any Oliver Stone movie, you're bound to get in-your-face confrontation and lots of Stone effects -- quick cuts, grainy segues and jarring confrontations.

That harried and hurried style is made to order for a bold take on professional football, which is exactly what you get in Stone's Any Given Sunday.

Not as smart or focused as North Dallas Forty, Stone's gridiron profile does do on-field justice to the violent game.

The off-field shenanigans are more like As The World Turns rather than the 'business unusual' of running the Miami Sharks football franchise.

Sharks? Miami? That's right, the National Football League refused to co-operate. No surprise.

There are Stone mini-expositions dealing with drug abuse, racism, ageism and corporate exploitation in pro football. Some of those sequences are intense, others, especially the money issues and the changing-of-the-guard issues, naively sentimental.

On the gladiator front, Dennis Quaid is good as a rickety veteran quarterback unsure of his future or his courage. Jamie Foxx, in a surprisingly complete performance, is the upstart African-American replacement QB, who is as self-centred as he is sensational.

LL Cool J does a decent job as a star halfback more concerned about his endorsements than a losing season. A snake-like James Woods is the team doctor who sacrifices the health and safety of the players for the presumed good of the team.

As we know, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.

And there lies the predictable conflict. The old-school Sharks coach, a remarkably adept Al Pacino, is at odds with the just-out-of-school team owner (Cameron Diaz). Natch.

What else does Any Given Sunday have going for it?

If you're young, it has an appropriately edgy hip-hop soundtrack. If you're a jock, it has lots of realistic collisions and fine cameos by hall-of-famer Jim Brown as the stoic defensive co-ordinator and former Giants star Lawrence Taylor as a dangerously injured linebacker.

It also has some locker room flesh flashes and a moment of full male frontal nudity.

Stone-cold brazen, I say. He couldn't do it any other way.

(This film is rated AA)

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