Where to watch The Longest Yard
4 Stars
A football player-turned-convict organizes a team of inmates to play against a team of prison guards. His dilemma is that the warden asks him to throw the game in return for an early release, but he is also concerned about the inmates’ lack of self-esteem.
Burt Reynolds will forever be remembered as the cowboy hat-wearing bandit riding away on his iron colt known as the Pontiac Trans Am. That image is so embedded in the zeitgeist that when he passed away, most obituaries only mentioned the Smokey and the Bandit series. Paul Crewe, the star quarterback of The ‘Mean Machine’, would be the second most popular character Reynolds ever portrayed on-screen. The Longest Yard is a seminal film from the 1970s, arguably as big of a crowd-pleaser as Rocky, and contains a screen performance from Burt that solidified him as the era’s most charismatic actor.
Robert Aldrich directs the movie in Hollywood’s classic style but adds split-screen action during the big game; these new-wave touches add energy to the lengthy football game, which dominates 40 minutes of the film’s 120-minute screen time. That’s ok because that’s what the audience is there for. The game is photographed and edited crisply so that the viewer is always clear on the outcome of each play and player. Aspects of The Longest Yard are dated, but the themes are timeless, and the chemistry between the actors playing these characters is still evident today.
Directed by: Robert Aldrich
Written by: Tracy Keenan Wynn, Albert S. Ruddy
Starring: Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert, Ed Lauter