Rating of
3/4
Awesome movie
TheWolf - wrote on 08/06/07
You just can't get away with this stuff anymore. In the first ten minutes, Burt Reynolds has beaten his girlfriend, stolen her car, gone on a massive police chase, dumped the sportscar off a bridge, then attacked two cops. Oh, and he's the hero of the movie, too.
I love this movie, it is a load of fun. No prison movie I can think of is so removed from the experience of a prison, even as one experiences it, an oxymoron. We are exposed to a warden, Rudolph Hazen (Eddie Albert), who becomes increasingly contemptible, ultimately even more so than the guards (that is not always the case). This distinction also reflects a reversal (somewhat) of the passions felt earlier in the movie. But it's best to have the focus, the villain, at the top, isn't it? OK, "The Longest Yard" is not really a prison movie, sort of like Florida, in which this film is set, is said not to be a Southern state. The concept of the film provides the crescendo, the climax, which we look for but do not always get in a prison movie or other movies, and also takes us out of the prison.
This movie has been remade a number of different ways, and yet with the story line the same each time, this is still the best.
