The Longest Yard

Ex-football star Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds) ends up in a prison run by sadistic sports-nut Warden Hazen (Eddie Albert). Strong-armed into forming an inmate football team, Crewe manages to instill an esprit de corps previously lacking in the prisoners' lives. Besides, they now have the chance to beat ...more

In keeping with Hollywood's shifting values in the early '70s, the protagonists of this prison comedy are inmates, and not the guards and wardens who oversee them. As in The Last Detail or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the film's representatives of mainstream society are evil or banal, while its rebellious heroes are irreverent and vital. And, as in those films, a charismatic leader helps the audience to identify with the counter-culture heroes -- a role ably filled here by Burt Reynolds. An ...more