SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

smatysia I saw this film years ago, and remember thinking it was OK. It's a little hard to imagine now, what a big deal Burt Reynolds was in the Seventies. No other movie star came close. On a recent viewing I found this this movie to be a bit better than I remembered. Still not a classic or anything, but pretty good. The depiction of prison life is harsh, as it surely is, but it seems a different world from today's prisons, with their racial gangs and constant strife. The football game is quite reminiscent of the one in M*A*S*H, from only a few years before.

skullislandsurferdotcom Having experienced the many Burt Reynold's road flicks throughout the mid/late seventies and early eighties you'd expect him to, in the very beginning as he's being chased by cops in a stolen hotrod, to get away and avoid all punishment. Nothing doing.Burt, playing a has-been football star, is sent to a backwards Florida work-camp where he's called upon by a power hungry warden (Eddie Albert) to start a team of convicts: who end up challenging the prison guard semi-pro outfit with a start-up game. Before that we experience the ragtag cons, ranging from giant Richard Keil to killer Bob Tessier to Reynolds himself as quarterback, improving their chops until the big game, consisting of Altman/M*A*S*H like split-screens showing all the action and then some.The best scenes involve Reynolds and manager James Hampton interviewing each brute as possible team members; or scenes before the plot's underway as Reynolds survives the swampy chain-gang. But things never get too intense as the entire film - despite some seriousness and creepiness (thanks to prison rat Charles Tyner) - remains with a wink, grin, and signature chortle: a template of Burt's work to come.

bkoganbing 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.

Akimbo_Slice Seeing as this year this movie will have it's 33rd birthday, it has had a great legacy. I saw the remake with Adam Sandler, and that made me want to see this version. I didn't expect to like this, as I've had pretty bad encounters with movies made from 1980 or earlier.But...I did like this. For a movie that's 33 years old, it's long and has a touching story. Burt Reynolds was great as the hero.It is long. I'm not calling it a bad thing, though. This story is really too great to only be told in 90 minutes. Over 2 hours is a long time for someone with no attention span, but I can stay for a long time.If you can stay in your seat for 120 minutes and like these movies, rent or (I strongly suggest to) buy The Longest Yard. It has a great legacy, and it isn't about to die yet!