'ANY GIVEN SUNDAY' KEEPS ON SCRAMBLING.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

It's war on the field, in the skybox and at the front office in ``Any Given Sunday.''

Yes, Oliver Stone has made a football movie, and he's packed it with all the blood, thunder and shouting that you'd expect. It's not a bad effort as predictable, inevitably sentimental pro sports exposes go. But for all its impassioned noise, the film ultimately has disappointingly little to say.

The good surprise, considering it's a Stone movie, is that there's a lot that's fun in ``Sunday.'' Reliable acting pros such as Al Pacino, Dennis Quaid, James Woods, Ann-Margret and even Charlton Heston mix it up vigorously with young comers Cameron Diaz, Aaron Eckhart and real find Jamie Foxx, whose vulgar TV comedy gave no indication that he can handle a ball and intense, jaw-busting dialogue so adroitly. It's also a pleasure to watch the film's NFL greats (Jim Brown and Lawrence Taylor in substantial parts; Y.A. Tittle, Johnny Unitas, Dick Butkus and others in cameos as rival coaches) acquit themselves credibly.

There's an abundance of bad boy humor, female flesh (though the most startling nudity is in the men's locker room) and enjoyably vicious confrontations staged at that earsplitting decibel level that Stone is unique in considering conversational. The film's other sonic and visual elements are marshaled with the relentless complexity the director is noted for, and they're generally combined with uncharacteristic coherence and humor. And in its one noteworthy social commentary, the film's racial politics are never less than astute.

But in spite of all these good things, ``Sunday'' fumbles about with two-dimensional characters, the most gratuitously unnecessary footage of all of this season's overlong films and an increasingly dumber plot line that comes down, in the clutch, to that hoariest of sports movie cliches: the big, odds-beating struggle to win the make-or-break game.

Pacino's Tony D'Amato is the legendary coach of the Associated Football Franchises of America's Miami Sharks (the NFL was understandably hesitant to cooperate with the uncontrollable Stone). He's won a lot of playoffs, but the current season is going right down the tubes. Veteran quarterback Cap Rooney (Quaid) is severely injured and thinking about retirement. His cocky young replacement, Foxx's Willie Beamen, breaks all the rules and can't play well until he vomits in front of the fans and TV cameras.

Meanwhile, Diaz's corporate mercenary Christina Pagniacci has inherited the team from her late, old-school daddy, and all she can think about is scoring points and the big bucks that go with them. Sheer shrill pragmatism, she's constantly on weary Tony's case. And Christina's not even the nastiest female in the movie. That prize is reserved for Lauren Holly's Cindy Rooney, whose mania for maintaining her husband Cap's status knows no restraint.

Although Stone displays unseemly relish whenever his movie tackles women, his heart is really in the surrogate father-son dynamics between D'Amato and Beamen. They don't like each other and do not want to admit there are things they need to learn from one another, but their relationship proves the movie's closest and deepest. There's a terrifically written and performed scene about midpoint in the movie when the two men articulately argue their opposing views. The old guy's all for team-player ethics, the kid enumerates the many ways in which minority athletes are exploited and must look out for themselves, and they're both right and wrong. All that damages this otherwise superb exchange is Stone's overkill intercutting of footage from ``Ben-Hur.'' We're bludgeoningly reminded that we're talking real gladiators here.

The script is credited to Stone, John Logan and Daniel Pyne, and it combines elements of several football-themed projects that have been kicking around Hollywood for years. That might account for much of the enjoyment that zigs in and out of ``Any Given Sunday,'' but the story line's increasing run to simplification seems more purely Stone. His more serious, issue-oriented movies often came down to relatively elementary delineations between good and evil. This somewhat more frivolous effort just projects that strategy onto the theme of winning and losing.

The facts

The film: ``Any Given Sunday'' (R; language, nudity, drug use, mild violence).

The stars: Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, James Woods, LL Cool J.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Oliver Stone. Written by Stone, John Logan and Daniel Pyne. Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, Clayton Townsend and Dan Halsted. Released by Warner Bros.

Running time: Two hours, 42 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: two and a half stars