The Longest Yard

Football and prison is a recipe for brutal mirth.

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 ...

On the face of it, the warden "Eddie Albert" maybe wasn't having his brightest idea when he decides that his prisoners should play a game of American football against his guards, but when a former pro is sent down for eighteen months after an altercation with a Citröen and the harbour, he has just the man to put together an opposing team. "Crewe" (Burt Reynolds) is offered preferential treatment for himself - and that might well mean early release, and for his team and so he and fellow inmate "Nate" (Michael Conrad) start recruiting. Obviously, there are no storage of volunteers but what starts off as a bit of glorified prank starts to mean something a little more to the team, and to "Crewe" himself as he must balance his selfish promises t...