Golpe Baixo

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.

Nowadays the remake -- starring Adam Sandler -- is rated PG-13 and he's a total wimp. Back in the '70s you could get away with being vicious, sexist, homophobic and racist and live to tell about it. In 2005, Adam Sandler says the F-word in one of his movies and parents are banning the film companies.

Yup, this film is clearly racist, homophobic and misogynist. Women are treated as sexual objects throughout, from the opening to the part where a prison warden's intern requests sexual favors from Burt Reynolds in return for handing him a movie-reel he needs.

African-Americans are portrayed as racist tough guys who are better than the whites at football, and they call whiteys "honkies" and other such words. In return all the whites are racist towards the blacks and it creates an interesting tension.

The homophobia sneaks into play when it's suggested one of the inmates is in love with Burt Reynolds. Quite a funny scene, actually.

"The Longest Yard" was one of Robert Aldrich's most successful films and many claimed it was him "selling out," but viewed 30 years later this really does stand apart from many of the other sports-comedy films of the decade. What is so special about "The Longest Yard" is probably that it plays like a mix between "Cool Hand Luke," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Smokey and the Bandit" -- it's got car chases, it's got sports, it's got funny stuff, BUT it also spends a lot of time developing its characters and creating some very dramatic sequences.

This is well directed, gritty, and fun -- not as much a "comedy" as you might expect, it is actually more serious. By the end of the film we've come to root for a bunch of murderers and rapists and even Burt Reynolds, and let's face it -- when was the last time you saw Burt Reynolds in a movie and actually LIKED his character?! A classic of the genre.

The chase scene in the beginning of this film is still one of my favorites of all time.

Oh, and the rest of the film ain't bad either... 👌

The Longest Yard refers not to the territory gained and lost in a football game. For Burt Reynolds its that prison yard that he's in for the next 18 months.

Reynolds isn't one of the noblest athletes ever to grace the National Football League. He was a quarterback who was thrown out of the game in a point shaving scandal. Now he's doing time for stealing his mistress's Maserati and causing a lot of havoc and mayhem when she called the cops on him.

The Longest Yard starts to look a little like From Here To Eternity where Monty Clift's company captain Philip Ober wants him to box for the post championship. Reynolds really isn't interested in playing football any more or helping warden Eddie Albert out with his semi-pro team of prison guards. But he's got less redress than Clift did in the army and Reynolds is not a person to make too fine a point of resistance.

What Reynolds suggests is a tune-up game with a squad of the inmates to play the guards to keep them in a fighting edge. Sounds real good to Albert who has a mean streak in him that Reynolds is slow to realize. There's a lot of possibilities to inflict some legal pain and for him to reassert his authority.

The Longest Yard is first and foremost about what Reynolds will do when the crisis comes. His track record doesn't suggest any heroics, but some people do surprise you.

The antagonists Reynolds and Albert are given good support by director Robert Aldrich's picked cast. Foremost among them are Ed Lauter as the chief guard, James Hampton as the team manager, and Charles Tyner in a particularly loathsome role as a prison stoolie. He will really make your skin crawl.

Bernadette Peters is also in The Longest Yard as Albert's secretary with the delightful name of Miss Toot who takes advantage of her position with a little sexual harassment of the prisoners. I do love that Dickensian name that was given her for this film. The only other female of note is Anitra Ford who is Reynolds mistress and whose Maserati he appropriates. When Burt says he earned that Maserati you can well believe it.

The Longest Yard is in a class by itself, a sports/prison movie. A film that created it's own genre. That has to count for something.

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 teams 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 cheekily examines the harshness of gridiron and fuses it with the brutality of the penal system. The script from Tracy Keenan Wynn is a sharp as a tack and Aldrich's use of split screens and slow motion sequences bring it all together very nicely indeed. I would also like to comment on the editing from Michael Luciano, nominated for the Oscar in that department, it didn't win, but in my honest opinion it's one of the best edited pictures from the 70s.

Taking the lead role of Crewe is Burt Reynolds, here he is at the peak of his powers (perhaps never better) and has star appeal positively bristling from every hair on his rugged chest. It's a great performance, believable in the action sequences (he was once a halfback for Florida), and crucially having the comic ability to make Wynn's script deliver the necessary mirth quota. What is of most interest to me is that Crewe is a less than honourable guy, the first 15 minutes of the film gives us all we need to know about his make up, but much like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest the following year, The Longest Yard has us rooting for the main protagonist entering the home straight, and that is something of a testament to Reynolds' charm and charisma.

The film's crowning glory is the football game itself, taking up three parts of an hour, the highest compliment I can give it is to say that one doesn't need to be a fan of the sport to enjoy this final third. It's highly engaging as a comedy piece whilst also being octane inventive as an action junkie's series of events. A number of former gridiron stars fill out both sides of the teams to instill a high believability factor into the match itself, and the ending is a pure rewarding punch the air piece of cinema. 9/10

If there ever was a manipulative film, this is it. By the end you are rooting for the prisoners (the nice guys, you know, armed robbers, murderers, rapists, child molesters) against those awful guards. Those poor sweet prisoners, being taken advantage of by those sadistic guards. Then there's the warden, Mr. Douglas from Green Acres, Eddie Albert. Rotten to the core. Bert Reynolds is his mugging best, first selling out, then winning one for the Gipper. It is violent, raucous, ridiculous from the stolen uniforms to the cross dressing cheerleaders. I am a non violent person, I knew everything was designed to work over my prejudices and my primitive feelings of revenge. And yet, when the game started, I was transfixed. I don't get it. Have I no taste?