The Mean Machine (aka The Longest Yard) [DVD]

I want to make the argument that "The Longest Yard" is an important film in the history of the movies because this 1974 comedy represents the point in cinematic history where a guy getting hit between the legs was funny for the last time. To be specific it was the moment in the film where it happened for the second time, which was even funnier than the first time it had happened, which was just a minute earlier in the movie. Ever since then I have not found these scenes to be anywhere near as funny because all such efforts are just pale imitations of what happens here.

"The Longest Yard" is solid B-movie material from start to finish. Burt Reynolds is Paul Crewe, a former pro quarterback who was banned from the sport for throwing games and ended up in prison for having some fun with the cops joy riding. In a nice example of casting against type Eddie Albert is the sadistic warden who is quite proud of the football team he has put together from the prison guards. So he decides that Crewe should put together a team from the prisoners for a friendly little game of football. Crewe is inclined not to be accommodating, but the warden, no doubt sensing a failure to communicate, persuades the ex-jock to get with the game plan.

We have to go through some rather trite and tired routines as Crewe puts together his team just so we can get to the fun part of the movie, which is the big football game. Obviously the cons are playing for self-respect and if the warden is stupid enough to give them the opportunity to pay back the guards for their brutal treatment under the guise of a football game, then we should just enjoy the fun. The set up might be stupid, but the game itself is one of the better staged pigskin competitions we have seen in a movie to date. Besides, the Mean Machine uses the drop kick, which I have always wanted to see ever since I read about it in "Gil Thorp" way back when. Certainly director Robert Aldrich takes the time to play the came and he makes excellent use of the split-screen to avoid having to constantly cut between the action on the field and the drama on the sidelines.

Reynolds is certainly the star of the film (he tells his team, "The most important thing to remember is: to protect your quarterback. ME!"), and the ex-Florida State football player certainly makes for a believable jock on the field (hey, the guy was drafted by the Baltimore Colts), while Albert clearly relishes the chance to forget all about Eva Gabor and have fun with the dark side. "Iron" Mike Conrad, before he became a cult figure as Sgt. Esterhaus on "Hill Street Blues," has a memorable turn as Nate Scarboro, one of the cons whose knees are not as strong as his heart so he has to settle for being the coach of the Mean Machine. Ed Lauter is Captain Knauer, the head of the guards, who manages not to be a total jerk about what is going on in the end as the film goes for one last over the top moment at the end.

Not to be mistaken for high art, "The Longest Yard" is a party film, perfect when you are in the mood for a little football.

This movie stands up to one of Burt Reynold's best performances involving a crucial football game where all the inmates are heroes and all the guards are the villains.

Paul Crew (Reynolds) is a retired pro football player. He spends his time with wealthy women who shower all the amenities he may want in post-season life. When he refuses to please his current girlfriend, he doesn't live up to her giggolo standards, so she isn't exactly accomodating when he wants to "borrow" her luxury sports car. She sends the police, for which he sends on a chase, while guzzling a drink in the driver's seat. Once apprehended, he must enter prison, for, above all things, assaulting two officers and resisting arrest. There, he meets the warden (Albert) who gives him an offer he can't refuse: To escape beatings and other maltreatment, he must assemble an inmate football team that will give the guard team a run for its money. The motives aren't clear at first, but Albert plays well his patronizing swindler role.

What makes 'The Longest Yard' so effective is the comraderie. We get big lugs who are just big babies and a team that has colour and heart. Like 'Cool Hand Luke,' this prison film has us rooting for some pretty underhanded people, but the villainy of the status quo presented has us cheering for the bad guys. With some excellent plot development as well as fine football scenes, 'The Longest Yard' is still a winner.

Even though the 70s was his decade at the box-office, few major movie stars made so few good pictures in their prime (or indeed his entire career) as Burt Reynolds, but the original version of The Longest Yard is certainly one of them. A classic bit of 70s anti-authoritarianism that holds up remarkably well, it offers him a prophetic role as the guy who had everything but pissed it all away. When we meet Paul `Wrecking' Crewe, he's a washed up footballer run out of the game for fixing a game who's now reduced to living off the latest in what's obviously a long line of rich women who treat him as a toy until a self-destructive whim lands him with three years hard labour in a southern prison. It's not quite his Cool Hand Luke, but it's close (rather than decapitating parking meters he gets jailed for a pointlessly destructive car chase), with Ed Lauter doing the duties as the sadistic chief guard. But there's a way to make his time easier - if he's willing to coach the football-mad warden Eddie Albert's team of guards, something Lauter is violently opposed to. When it becomes clear he can't win either way, he comes up with the idea of a warmup game to raise the guards' morale with an easy victory over a team of cons, who see it as a chance to get their own back on the guards and stick it to The Man.

If it sounds like a whole movie built around the anarchically violent football game scene from M*A*S*H, director Robert Aldrich and screenwriter Tracy Keenan Wynn manage to give it a bit more substance, tapping into the disillusionment of the 70s and the decade's fixation with antiheroes, never quite losing sight of the characters' everyday despair and need for some small hollow victory, even if it is ultimately violent and ineffective. It's certainly an inherently hypocritical film - after a first half that sees the Mean Machine go out of their way to inflict unnecessary roughness on the guards it expects us to be outraged when the guards respond in kind in the second half. But then this is the kind of film that has to make the guards even worse than the cons to work, and somehow their casual institutional cruelty - and the murder of one of the convicts - does the trick well enough to turn this into the kind of picture where you're rooting for the kind of people you'd run a mile from. The film never plays down the fact that the cons (played by the likes of James Hampton, Michael Conrad, Richard Kiel, Charles Tyner and the odd pro-footballer) are dangerous people who do belong behind bars or that Reynolds is his own worst enemy, but the surprising thing is that at the same time it's also often very funny without straying into caricature or crude sentimentality. And it never quite loses its sense of danger: unlike the Adam Sandler remake, there's no guarantee that the hero will make it to the end credits here.

The game itself has a lot of the split-screen work that Aldrich was increasingly fascinated with in the 70s, though nothing as audacious as his use of the format in Twilight's Last Gleaming, and a great transfer on the special edition DVD makes the most of Joseph Biroc's photography. One of Aldrich's best latter films and his last big box-office hit, it still scores points more than three decades on.

Unlike the bare-bones original DVD release, the special edition has a good selection of extras - - includes audio commentary by Reynolds and producer Albert S. Ruddy, two retrospective making of featurettes, trailer and a promo for the redundant 2005 remake.