Stripped down to its bare essentials, this is a good story, one totally unexpected from director Stone. Toss in a bunch of instantly recognizable faces with bit parts, though, and things get a bit distracting. Making too-brief-to-care appearances are James Woods, Matthew Modine, Lauren Holly and — the briefest of them all — Charlton Heston, as the Commissioner of the AFFA. (Stone uses a clip from "Ben-Hur" that gets more time than Heston's role here.) Even Stone himself gets more lines than Heston, as one of the Sharks' sports announcers.

"Any Given Sunday" tries to encapsulate everything that exists about the game of football — what it is, as well as what it isn't — into one movie. And not only in the story line, but in its cinematography as well. Every shot imaginable — from repeated slow motion shots of twirling footballs being thrown to blurry scenes of crunching tackles to multiple scenes inside the locker room — is here, backed with songs like Kid Rock's "Bawitdaba." All of which gives "Any Given Sunday" the feel of a movie built around a steady stream of music videos.

In the end, the impression is that fixing this film's problems would be a lot like leading the begrudged horse to its trough. That is, you can lead Oliver Stone to the editing room, but you can't make him edit.

"Any Given Sunday" is rated R for profanity, vulgarity (bathroom humor), full frontal male nudity and some female nudity, simulated drug use and sports-related violence.