As with most sports films, you know how the final game ends up. What makes it such a treat is how director Robert Aldrich gets you there. The Longest Yard jumps from comedy to sports film to drama with equal ease, and the level of cynicism and bleakness inside each jumps out with alarming intensity. This is the film for football fans, and anyone interested in catching the upcoming Adam Sandler remake should skip the theater and just give the far superior original a go.
The Longest Yard: Lockdown Edition
4 & 1/2 Stars
 |
| Burt is dead sexy |
When people think of the great sports movies, football-themed films are always conspicuously absent from the list. Baseball, of course, rules the genre, with basketball and golf taking up the next two slots. So why, when football is such a massive part of American sports, are there no great movies about it? Well, to tell the truth, there is a great football movie, and no it’s not Any Given Sunday or Rudy. It’s the 1974 Burt Reynolds classic, The Longest Yard.
Seriously. Why? Well for one, it’s just a great movie. Man vs. The Man. Underdogs bucking authority for one last shot at dignity and pride. Great stuff, that. But most importantly it’s the football. The last 1/3 rd of The Longest Yard is the game between the Burt Reynolds led convicts and the prison guards and, if you took out the talky bits, it’s as if you’re watching a semi-pro game. It moves like a football game, and boy does it hit like one. They didn’t pull any punches filming this, and that shows up on the screen. Having the bulk of the teams comprised of ex football pros certainly makes it feel all the more real.
The gist of the story is this: former All Pro quarterback Paul Crewe hasn’t played a game since he was kicked out of the NFL for points shaving. Fed up with his kept life, he steals his gal’s car, tears through the city in a high speed chase, dumps the car in the bay, and then beats up two cops. Needless to say, he goes to jail. He ends up in Citrus State Prison, where the warden (a phenomenal Eddie Albert) has pulled some strings to bring the ex NFL great to his little facility in the hopes that Crewe will coach his guards’ semi-pro team to a national championship. Crewe refuses to help, but eventually agrees to lead a team of convicts against the guards in an exhibition match which Albert thinks will be an easy win for his law-lovin’ boys.
Boy, is he wrong. Crewe collects an assortment of violent offenders and near-sociopaths that manage to come together for their own pride, dignity, and a shot at crippling the guards who torment them every day.
As with most sports films, you know how the final game ends up. What makes it such a treat is how director Robert Aldrich gets you there. The Longest Yard jumps from comedy to sports film to drama with equal ease, and the level of cynicism and bleakness inside each jumps out with alarming intensity. This is the film for football fans, and anyone interested in catching the upcoming Adam Sandler remake should skip the theater and just give the far superior original a go.