Wonderful character development!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The Longest Yard refers not to the territory gained and lost in a football game. For Burt Reynolds its that prison yard that he's in for the next 18 months. Reynolds isn't one of the noblest athletes ever to grace the National Football League. He was a quarterback who was thrown out of the game in a point shaving scandal. Now he's doing time for stealing his mistress's Maserati and causing a lot of havoc and mayhem when she called the cops on him.The Longest Yard starts to look a little like From Here To Eternity where Monty Clift's company captain Philip Ober wants him to box for the post championship. Reynolds really isn't interested in playing football any more or helping warden Eddie Albert out with his semi-pro team of prison guards. But he's got less redress than Clift did in the army and Reynolds is not a person to make too fine a point of resistance.What Reynolds suggests is a tune-up game with a squad of the inmates to play the guards to keep them in a fighting edge. Sounds real good to Albert who has a mean streak in him that Reynolds is slow to realize. There's a lot of possibilities to inflict some legal pain and for him to reassert his authority.The Longest Yard is first and foremost about what Reynolds will do when the crisis comes. His track record doesn't suggest any heroics, but some people do surprise you.The antagonists Reynolds and Albert are given good support by director Robert Aldrich's picked cast. Foremost among them are Ed Lauter as the chief guard, James Hampton as the team manager, and Charles Tyner in a particularly loathsome role as a prison stoolie. He will really make your skin crawl.Bernadette Peters is also in The Longest Yard as Albert's secretary with the delightful name of Miss Toot who takes advantage of her position with a little sexual harassment of the prisoners. I do love that Dickensian name that was given her for this film. The only other female of note is Anitra Ford who is Reynolds mistress and whose Maserati he appropriates. When Burt says he earned that Maserati you can well believe it.The Longest Yard is in a class by itself, a sports/prison movie. A film that created it's own genre. That has to count for something.

Burt Reynolds plays Paul Crewe, a reprehensible character discovering, in a prison, dignity and esteem… You see him, at the beginning of the movie—as a rising star—beating up a woman, stealing her car, drunken driving, insulting cops in a bar, resisting arrest… He's seen so funny when he insulted the miniature cop who's about to arrest him, while the cop's partner is laughing openly… Eddie Albert was very charming when he meets Paul Crewe at his arrival to Citrus State Prison… Aldrich wanted to play Warden Hazen as the guy who had the veneer of normalcy, the veneer of being a good executive, the veneer of keeping it all together till it starts unraveling… He really was just a despicable, oily, warden type… In one game scene, we see him over and over again, getting up just with that same look of shock on his face… Ed Lauter (Captain Knauer) is wonderful… He runs the football team… He is a bad guy and he represents everything that is wrong with that prison system and everything else… He changes as a result… And to see that is just so delightful… He's got the classic Ed Lauter's scene at the end… James Hampton plays Caretaker, the character who brings the team all together and pushes Burt's character ahead to win the game… Ray Nitschke plays the toughest, meanest linebacker in football… Richard Kiel, Bob Tessier, Charles Tyner, Michael Conrad, and Harry Caesar give the film a certain veracity, you almost thing you are in jail

Disgraced former pro football quarterback Paul Crewe is sent to prison after a drunken night to remember. The prison is run by Warden Hazen, a football nut who spies an opportunity to utilise Crewe's ability at the sport to enhance the prison guards team skills. After initially declining to help, Crewe is swayed into putting together a team of convicts to take on the guards in a one off match, thieves, murderers and psychopaths collectively come together to literally, beat the guards, but Crewe also has his own personal demons to exorcise.This violent, but wonderfully funny film has many things going for it. Directed with style by the gifted hands of Robert Aldrich, The Longest Yard cheekily examines the harshness of gridiron and fuses it with the brutality of the penal system. The script from Tracy Keenan Wynn is a sharp as a tack and Aldrich's use of split screens and slow motion sequences bring it all together very nicely indeed. I would also like to comment on the editing from Michael Luciano, nominated for the Oscar in that department, it didn't win, but in my honest opinion it's one of the best edited pictures from the 70s.Taking the lead role of Crewe is Burt Reynolds, here he is at the peak of his powers (perhaps never better) and has star appeal positively bristling from every hair on his rugged chest. It's a great performance, believable in the action sequences (he was once a halfback for Florida), and crucially having the comic ability to make Wynn's script deliver the necessary mirth quota. What is of most interest to me is that Crewe is a less than honourable guy, the first 15 minutes of the film gives us all we need to know about his make up, but much like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest the following year, The Longest Yard has us rooting for the main protagonist entering the home straight, and that is something of a testament to Reynolds' charm and charisma.The film's crowning glory is the football game itself, taking up three parts of an hour, the highest compliment I can give it is to say that one doesn't need to be a fan of the sport to enjoy this final third. It's highly engaging as a comedy piece whilst also being octane inventive as an action junkie's series of events. A number of former gridiron stars fill out both sides of the teams to instill a high believability factor into the match itself, and the ending is a pure rewarding punch the air piece of cinema. 9/10

A film of this nature typically would start with me saying, "I hate sports films", but those words will not escape me this time. I still feel the same about sports films, but in this instance, Reynolds coupled with James Hampton (giving the best performance of Caretaker), and the sinister Captain Knauer (played by Ed Lauter) just meshed extremely well that even the most pessimistic of sports cinema viewers can enjoy this golden nugget from a creative era of film. I liked the confident Reynolds that had already come to grips with his inner-demons that nothing seemed to matter to him in his main life, so going to prison helped him find himself. I loved this dynamic because in most films it is the polar opposite. Getting out of prison means you discover yourself, not the other way. Also, I never felt trapped. This is tough to do with a prison film because the walls are constantly reminding you where you are, but in fact, Aldrich and his cast brought the prison to life, giving it a character all of its own. Reynolds was perfect for this role. He embodied the lightness of the scenes, while bringing a professional level of acting to the role. He was funny, but not juvenile funny, but sophisticated funny. He controlled his scenes, giving those around him a chance to create moments of their own. Not to go too off topic, but Sandler made his version a "Sandler movie", while with the original – it was obviously an ensemble piece. Everyone fell into their roles with ease, such as Eddie Albert as Warden Hazen, who demonstrated a level of power while revealing his weaknesses. He was evil, but didn't need the slicked hair or looming lights. We knew what he could do, what he had done, and what he was willing to do to win. The final scene will didn't need music to intensify, Albert brought it all himself. The same, as stated before, can be said for Lauter who embodies evil with Knauer. Without drooling too heavily on myself, everyone was phenomenal in this film – the actors were assembled with a delicate stick which allowed each to build this cult film.When sports films take 47 minutes for the game itself, one worries that character development goes to the wayside. This is not the case here. Robert Aldrich gives us plenty of moments of fresh air prior to the epic football game to build up to the sad moments and the climactic moments. It is pure cane-sugar watching him take us from character to character, giving us just small inch after small inch, until the final moments. See – I am drooling quite a bit. Absolutely, there were some dull moments to this film – the game was lengthy, but without complaining I would say that it was essential to the story. While I loved the the major players, when it came to the game, I did get lost on whom was whom during the heated battle. Maybe it was just me, but I needed stronger characters during the game. I wanted to make sure that I could identify who was who by some characteristic – but I think this was just because of the time difference. Sandler's version you knew who was who because it was modern players – my knowledge of sports is weak, so I had trouble following the big names in the game. That isn't to say that it detracted too much from the film, but for me it was a bit annoying.The only aspect that I have to criticize is the way the game was filmed. The editing was sharp, hey – it won an Oscar, but when the editor uses boxes to make the game seem more exciting, I was just distracted further from the game. I could see the reason to bring some style to the game, but the boxes, different pans, and multi-angles just felt cliché and randomly inserted to keep the attention of the viewers. The game was strong enough, it didn't need this snappy "special effects" to strengthen it. It made me anxious to watch it, kinda epileptic if further questions need to be asked. It just didn't fit. It felt like someone else took control and created the environment where the beginning didn't match the ending. If that style of film-making was used during all the practices, than maybe it would have been considered annoying, but it would have been consistent. Choppy consistency – maybe that is my point here. Either way, it wasn't a big compliant, just an area I had trouble connecting myself to.Overall, I surprise myself when saying this, but I liked "The Longest Yard". It is the foundation for the "Mean Machine" and (grumble), the Sandler remake. I am impressed by the power of the characters and how well Reynolds took this role and played with it. The opening sequence solidified his character, and up until the ending he never let me go. Who couldn't enjoy Reynolds demolishing a car than going to get a drink afterwords. Hysterical. Aldrich was a perfect fit for this film, and it surprised me that the producer of the "Godfather" would choose this as his next project – but seeing the final product, it doesn't surprise me. It was a well balanced film of both comedy and a slice of drama. It wasn't childish humor, but something that one could laugh at a second time. He controlled what could have been a chaotic film by allowing each to grow on their own to define themselves. The unique perspective of using athletes and actors was creative for its time, giving us the realism of the game before our eyes. Aside from the choppy editing near the end, I thought this was a perfect balance between sports and comedy.Mean Machine! Mean Machine! Grade: **** out of *****