Any Given Sunday (1999)
Directed by Oliver Stone
What has driven millions of men to fight on the battlefield over the centuries? Certainly motivation, but this can wane in the face of individual death and the prospect of the army’s defeat.
In the film Any Given Sunday, Al Pacino portrays American football coach Tony D’Amato. Everything is against him. His team, the Sharks, are in a slump. The past good results are fading. The president’s death has shaken the old ownership’s faith in his coaching. Discontent, player injuries, and media hostility add to the troubles. Words seem futile: more training is needed, or perhaps a new coach.
But before a decisive playoff game, D’Amato delivers a pre-game speech reminiscent of an officer’s address before a trench assault. Life is a fight to not give up an inch. As a middle-aged man, he, coach of those powerful athletes, has made many mistakes. He has given up on many small fronts and, like those battling in mud and fire against declared enemies, has accumulated many small defeats leading to final defeat.
Unfortunately, it’s only when you truly lose that you realize kilometers of ground come from the sum of many small segments given up little by little. Life, war, football: it’s all about small spaces lost progressively. But what characterizes this defeatism?
According to Tony D’Amato, it’s considering that the will to not give up is in the eyes of loved ones, teammates, and comrades. Individual success can only come from respecting what the person next to you wants to do. If the person beside us doesn’t want to give up, perhaps we should follow their lead, turning a personal need into a common issue, and then receiving the final benefit of knowing that what was good for everyone can also be good for us.
Like soldiers ready to fight and die, the Sharks are now waiting to take the field and give their all.
* * *
Tony D’Amato: I don’t know what to say, really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives. All comes down to today, and either, we heal as a team, or we’re gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play. Until we’re finished. We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb outta hell… one inch at a time. Now I can’t do it for ya, I’m too old. I look around, I see these young faces and I think, I mean, I’ve made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh, I’ve pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who’s ever loved me. And lately, I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror. You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that’s… that’s… that’s a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losin’ stuff. You find out life’s this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game – life or football – the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I’ll tell you this, in any fight it’s the guy whose willing to die whose gonna win that inch. And I know, if I’m gonna have any life anymore it’s because I’m still willing to fight and die for that inch, because that’s what living is, the six inches in front of your face. Now I can’t make you do it. You’ve got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think ya going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team, because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him. That’s a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That’s football guys, that’s all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?
