The Longest Yard [M]

Disgraced football superstar Paul Crewe doesn’t have a friend in the world, but things get really bad for him when he gets arrested and thrown into an unforgiving prison in the middle of nowhere. As soon as he arrives the warden coerces him into forming a football team made up of the convicts to play against his team of prison guards. Against the idea at the start, Crewe soon changes his mind when he sees how mistreating and brutal the guards are to the inmates and he forms the team to dole out a little payback on the guards as well as the blackmailing warden. 

A remake of the original film, which starred Burt Reynolds, The Longest Yard is a surprisingly touching and funny little movie that balances really well between drama and comedy. Achieving a climactic and overwhelming gunning for these colourful characters, not all that dissimilar to Cool Runnings, The Longest Yard is a film that I rather enjoyed, though there were some facets that were a little exaggerated, which is to be expected in an American comedy. Nevertheless, I did enjoy this movie. 

Disgraced football superstar Paul Crewe doesn’t have a friend in the world, but things get really bad for him when he gets arrested and thrown into an unforgiving prison in the middle of nowhere. As soon as he arrives the warden coerces him into forming a football team made up of the convicts to play against his team of prison guards. Against the idea at the start, Crewe soon changes his mind when he sees how mistreating and brutal the guards are to the inmates and he forms the team to dole out a little payback on the guards as well as the blackmailing warden. 

What I particularly liked about this movie was that it was one of the few films (in fact the only one that I’ve seen) where Adam Sandler doesn’t play some overly goofy or exaggerated character. Here he was just a guy, a guy deeply in moral torment, and Adam played the part rather well. Congrats. The Longest Yard is really nicely balanced between drama and comedy. 

The drama is achieved through the basic story, which features some heavy themes of redemption, revenge, corruption, friendship, and teamwork. 

And then the comedy is achieved through the colourful and eccentric motley crew of characters that we have; a nice blend of visual gags and verbal ones as well as irony and violence humour. 

Starring Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Burt Reynolds, Nelly, Terry Crews, Bob Sapp, Nicholas Turturro, Dalip Singh, William Fichtner,  James Cromwell, Tracy Morgan, Courtney Cox, and Rob Schneider, The Longest Yard is a surprisingly good little movie that’s filled with action, violence, sport, friendship, and comedy. I wasn’t in the mood to watch it initially, but I did and I feel so much better and out of the bad mood, so there you go.