The Longest Yard
With Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert, Ed Lauter.
US, 1974, 35mm, color, 121 min.
Print source: Sony Pictures
In the fierce opening minutes of The Longest Yard, perhaps the mother of all underdog sports comedies, washed-up former pro quarterback Paul “Wrecking” Crewe walks out on his affluent girlfriend in a brutal rage, guides a series of cop cars on a skidding and screeching joy ride through Palm Beach and provokes a fistfight with a pair of policemen. It is hardly an ingratiating character introduction, and despite the redemptive power that prisons often assume over troubled souls in the cinema, Paul’s hard edges never soften under Aldrich’s pitiless gaze, even after he enters Georgia State Prison and rounds up a motley crew of inmates for a pigskin match against the wicked warden’s well-groomed staff squad. Charged with Deep South racial tension, a post-Nixon aversion to authority, and a vision of football as compulsory outlet for masculine anger rather than embodiment of American ideals, The Longest Yard is a ribald tale of triumph in which the victors are rapists, murderers and roughnecks, and winning leads only to more losing.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Four Star Playhouse: The Squeeze, The Witness and The Hard Way
The Southerner
