The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

You could be forgiven for believing that Burt Reynolds can only play comedic characters and not capable of drama. Well, you would be wrong. He is very comfortable here in a serious drama about prison life in general - with emphasis placed upon the harsh reality of being a convict. "The Longest Yard" is definitely one of the better films from Burt Reynolds. The plot, dialogue, acting, direction and photography fit the bill. The supporting cast includes Eddie Albert and Ed Lauter as two great villains. There is some humour once in a while but the film is uncompromising regarding the harsh treatment to which the convicts are subjected. The football game section is undoubtedly the highlight of "The Longest Yard" but the film is well made on all fronts.

I've seen this one before, at least 2 or 3 times in my adult life and a few, I'm sure, as a kid watching with my dad. It's been a good dozen years since I last saw it and it's amazing how much of the movie I was familiar with -- about every scene. Prison movie, football movie, Burt Reynolds movie, even has a pretty good car chase! This is without a doubt a man's movie. Is that sexist? I don't want to be but it really is. I am not saying women can't watch it and enjoy it just as much as their male counterparts, but this is what being a man is all about! Don't give me no Pretty Woman or Steel Magnolias on a Sunday afternoon, give me football, hard hitting American football! Thank you director Robert Aldrich and thank you Burt for this fun and well acted 70's classic!--A Kat Pirate Screener

Having experienced the many Burt Reynold's road flicks throughout the mid/late seventies and early eighties you'd expect him to, in the very beginning as he's being chased by cops in a stolen hotrod, to get away and avoid all punishment. Nothing doing.Burt, playing a has-been football star, is sent to a backwards Florida work-camp where he's called upon by a power hungry warden (Eddie Albert) to start a team of convicts: who end up challenging the prison guard semi-pro outfit with a start-up game. Before that we experience the ragtag cons, ranging from giant Richard Keil to killer Bob Tessier to Reynolds himself as quarterback, improving their chops until the big game, consisting of Altman/M*A*S*H like split-screens showing all the action and then some.The best scenes involve Reynolds and manager James Hampton interviewing each brute as possible team members; or scenes before the plot's underway as Reynolds survives the swampy chain-gang. But things never get too intense as the entire film - despite some seriousness and creepiness (thanks to prison rat Charles Tyner) - remains with a wink, grin, and signature chortle: a template of Burt's work to come.

Reynolds, near the beginning of his wild ride to fame, is close to his sexiest in this cheeky, rough, but very entertaining, prison/football flick. He plays a careless, disrespectful kept man who is jailed for theft when he shoves around his benefactress Ford and takes off in her car. Thanks to his credentials as an ex-pro football player, the prison warden Albert requests his aid in coaching the semi-pro team, consisting of the prison's brutal guards. Chief guard Lauter refuses to allow Reynolds to have any input, but Albert recruits him in another way, asking him to form a team made up of convicts so that the guards' team can build up their strength and strategy. The film details his selection of the players and the trials they undergo in order to make it to the big game, a game which takes up nearly the entire second half of the movie. Reynolds starts the film off with longish hair and a moustache and sports a hilarious, yet very sexy, 1970's pantsuit. He then gets a haircut and a shave and looks even better. His smart-aleck charm and affinity for football are on full display here. His interactions with the various cons give him ample opportunity to do what he does best. Albert is a far cry from his amiable sitcom persona and is surprisingly intense and even scary in his role. Hampton plays one of his better screen roles as Reynolds' right hand man and friendly know-it-all. Other familiar actors such as Lauter and Henry as guards and Conrad and Tessier as fellow prisoners dot the cast. Quite surprising as well is a cameo turn by Peters as the impossibly-coiffed, amorous secretary to Albert. Known primarily for her stage work at the time, she received the role through her friendship with Reynolds. The film takes its time telling its story, letting Reynolds potentially unlikable character win over the audience as he wins over his cellmates. Filming in a real prison (located in Georgia, despite the film's Florida setting, and overseen by none other than Governor Jimmy Carter) and on sweltering outdoor locations help set the right mood. A crowd-pleasing, even inspirational film to many a young man, it was remade by Adam Sandler in 2005.