Terry's Reviews
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The Longest Yard
– Lockdown Edition Paramount Home Entertainment – 2005 Directed
by Robert Aldrich Starring |
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| THE LONGEST YARD is
probably the best football movie ever made. The only thing that would come close for me
would be BRIAN’S SONG. This film was made when filmmakers and movie studios
didn’t feel the need to dumb down the story. Compare this to the recent remake and
there is absolutely no comparison. Adam Sandler doesn’t have the charisma that Burt
Reynolds has and you could go on to say the same about both casts. I also think the PG-13
rating really hurt the new film because it didn’t have any kind of edge. I mean
seriously, this is a story about a guy in prison with ruthless inmates and even nastier
guards. Why would anyone want to soften it? Burt Reynolds plays Paul Crewe, a washed up quarterback who had won the NFL Most Valuable Player award but more importantly was a player involved with point shaving scandal. This is what must have got him thrown out of the league and he’s been slumming around ever since. The movie begins with Paul Crewe dumping the fancy car of a rich woman into a river. He’s fed up with satisfying the rich woman’s physical demands and taking verbal abuse. She calls the cops on him and he ends up going to prison. During his introduction into the prison, Warden Hazen (Eddie Albert) asks Crewe to if he’d like to play a football against his guard team. Crewe is reluctant to play until the Warden says that he can make it so that Crewe spends the rest of his life in prison. Warden Hazen sees this as an opportunity to play against one of the best and to prepare his football team for the upcoming season. Crewe ends up teaming with an inmate named Caretaker (James Hampton) who is the one guy in within the prison who can get pretty much anything anybody wants. As the two guys go about recruiting other inmates for the team, they start assembling an odd cast of characters who are big, strong and psychotic. A former NFL lineman named Nate Scarboro (Michael Conrad) ends up helping coach the team and getting them ready to play against the powerful guards. Along the way Captain Knauer (Ed Lauer) roughs up Crewe trying to encourage him to not play the game because he obviously feels Crewe is a real threat to beat his team. Soon the game is set and we watch as both sides go at it rough and tumble. The game is emotion-fueled entertainment. It’s really kind of strange if you think about it because the whole time you are rooting for the inmates, wanting to see the guards and Warden get pulverized. THE LONGEST YARD: Lockdown Edition does have nice supplements: There is an audio commentary provided by Burt Reynolds and writer/producer Albert Ruddy. Ruddy says THE LONGEST YARD wasn’t supposed to be a comedy, but Reynolds’ charisma and improvisation from the cast helped shaped the movie. They go on to say what they remembered about shooting the movie and the little anecdotes that were memorable. Doing Time On The Longest Yard is a retrospective documentary that runs about 12 minutes. We find out the genesis of Paul Crewe, how the film became a comedy and how Burt Reynolds was brought onto the project. A group of sportswriters make their comments on THE LONGEST YARD, stating their high opinion of the film. Unleashing the Mean Machine continues where the first documentary left off with sports writers and pro football players speaking on how football was played in the film. The 4-minute trailer is included. As an extra bonus there is a 5-dollar off coupon to the remake of THE LONGEST YARD. Speaking of the remake, there’s also a featurette on the remake. It runs just over 3 minutes and does its job to get you interested in seeing the new film. But the remake only further proves how good this original film really was. THE LONGEST YARD is funny, but more importantly it has a dramatic emotional heart. Check it out if you haven’t done so already. |
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