The Longest Yard

Bitter former football player Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds) gets into a physical fight with his girlfriend and gets sent to prison. Everybody dismisses Crewe for suspected point shaving. Warden Hazen (Eddie Albert) manages a semi-pro football team of prison guards. Captain Knauer (Ed Lauter) leads the team and orders Crewe from joining. Hazen is not happy with Knauer's result. Crewe reluctantly agrees to organize a prisoners team and play an exhibition game.

I don't mind the Adam Sandler version but it's nothing great. This version is so much better. It is darker. It's not as jokey but the black comedy hits so much harder. It starts dark with Crewe hitting his girlfriend. At first, it doesn't even seem like a comedy except for Burt's casual sly mannerisms. It reminds me of other serious prison dramas until it turns more into a sports movie. So it works as both genre. It has great emotions and touching relationships. It's a good drama and has a great feel good development. It essentially works in all areas.

You just can't get away with this stuff anymore. In the first ten minutes, Burt Reynolds has beaten his girlfriend, stolen her car, gone on a massive police chase, dumped the sportscar off a bridge, then attacked two cops. Oh, and he's the hero of the movie, too.

Nowadays the remake -- starring Adam Sandler -- is rated PG-13 and he's a total wimp. Back in the '70s you could get away with being vicious, sexist, homophobic and racist and live to tell about it. In 2005, Adam Sandler says the F-word in one of his movies and parents are banning the film companies.

Yup, this film is clearly racist, homophobic and misogynist. Women are treated as sexual objects throughout, from the opening to the part where a prison warden's intern requests sexual favors from Burt Reynolds in return for handing him a movie-reel he needs.

African-Americans are portrayed as racist tough guys who are better than the whites at football, and they call whiteys "honkies" and other such words. In return all the whites are racist towards the blacks and it creates an interesting tension.

The homophobia sneaks into play when it's suggested one of the inmates is in love with Burt Reynolds. Quite a funny scene, actually.

"The Longest Yard" was one of Robert Aldrich's most successful films and many claimed it was him "selling out," but viewed 30 years later this really does stand apart from many of the other sports-comedy films of the decade. What is so special about "The Longest Yard" is probably that it plays like a mix between "Cool Hand Luke," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Smokey and the Bandit" -- it's got car chases, it's got sports, it's got funny stuff, BUT it also spends a lot of time developing its characters and creating some very dramatic sequences.

This is well directed, gritty, and fun -- not as much a "comedy" as you might expect, it is actually more serious. By the end of the film we've come to root for a bunch of murderers and rapists and even Burt Reynolds, and let's face it -- when was the last time you saw Burt Reynolds in a movie and actually LIKED his character?! A classic of the genre.

After seeing this flick again last year after I don't know how long, at first I wondered why I used to really like this film. But after watching the whole thing to the end, I remember why. This is one of those films that generated a whole bunch of "copy-cat" movies, none which are even worth remembering (or seeing). Sure, it's a macho-man movie, but it works, and to see the talent (both actors and ex-pro ball players) on the screen, this is a movie you can watch over and over. By the way, it was refreshing to see the widescreen DVD version which was just released.

If there ever was a manipulative film, this is it. By the end you are rooting for the prisoners (the nice guys, you know, armed robbers, murderers, rapists, child molesters) against those awful guards. Those poor sweet prisoners, being taken advantage of by those sadistic guards. Then there's the warden, Mr. Douglas from Green Acres, Eddie Albert. Rotten to the core. Bert Reynolds is his mugging best, first selling out, then winning one for the Gipper. It is violent, raucous, ridiculous from the stolen uniforms to the cross dressing cheerleaders. I am a non violent person, I knew everything was designed to work over my prejudices and my primitive feelings of revenge. And yet, when the game started, I was transfixed. I don't get it. Have I no taste?

Tongue and Cheek satire and sports movies generally are not exactly two movies genres that you combine together, however Burt Reynolds did not believe that, and as a result he starred in a movie that manages to be funny, poignant, intense, and everything in-between. I really don't know how the writers, producers and directors came up with something that turned out to be so awesome. The Longest Yard is masterful, it is funny, but it isn't a comedy, there is a lot of football but it is more than a just a sports movie, this is a hard movie to classify and maybe that is the reason it is so good.

Burt Reynolds plays a washed up football player who winds up in the slammer for drunk driving. While there the warden asks him to put together a football team to go up against the prison guards, who play in a semi-professional league. The prisoners are an interesting group of misfits and criminals, played perfectly by the various character actors in the parts. Burt Reynolds manages to be a brilliant lead of all of these crazy cons, and is perfect in this part. This movie is great but it doesn't exactly scream out greatness at first. This is a movie where you will be half way through and you will realize this is just a great movie to watch.

Aside from the fact it is just an off-beat movie it is hard to understand why this movie is so good, I don't know why myself, the jokes are not really laugh out loud hysterical, but it becomes apparent the reason this movie is so good is because it really ventured into areas that few films had, and while there are references to racial problems, homosexuality, although very muted, prison violence, crooked law enforcement officials and other issues rarely discussed on screen.

What I am surprised at is that these issues become prominent, and something you heed in the movie, and at the same time the over the top satire merges with this movie perfectly. Even watching a movie like this as compared to other comedies that raise marginally controversial issues like racism, such as Police Academy, Police Academy sort of makes a comedy out of racism and sexism, and to a lesser degree a movie like Caddyshack, but this movie puts the comedy and the controversial issues together, not making them one, but two completely different facets of the movie. Normally when you have a movie that is as intense as this it is hard to have such satirical elements in a movie and be a good movie, but this movie combines the two elements so effortlessly.

This is definitely an underdog movie, in that the prisoners are supposed to lose, they are a bunch of cons that rarely if ever played football, and have no chance going up against a semi-professional team. The characters, too numerous to name make this movie that much better. The movie also is a prison movie, and is successful at that, this is one of those movies, everything just clicked right, and the result is near perfection. One reason to watch this movie is Eddie Albert, as the ever smiling and smugly pleasant prison warden who is the mastermind of the entire affair, he is just perfect here, so meticulously uttering every word to the point that he looks like he is in pain, and he is perfect in the role. James Hampton also has an excellent part as Reynolds' sidekick in prison. This is just an all around great movie excellent in so many different ways.

I watch a movie like this, and I wonder why there are so few movies like this today, movies so offbeat but funny, movies that actually have decent acting, movies that are this interesting, instead of typical silly fare you would get like a dumb teen movie or a dumb action movie. This movie is priceless in a way. When I first heard of the movie I didn't think it would be that good, but when I watched it I realized why it was Oscar nominated and so well thought of. I don't know why it clicked, but it did, and the result is a film definitely worth seeing, and one of the best of the 1970s.