Is There Life After Conviction? The Longest Yard

Ex-football star Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler) is getting fed up with his life; after being charged with intentionally shaving points on a big game he’s on probation, his girlfriend is a b****y control freak, and her gay best friend has a crush on him. In the midst of what we get the sense is one of her numerous socialite parties Crewe picks himself up off the couch where he’s been watching his football tapes, grabs yet another six-pack, and heads out the door…to swiftly engage himself in a high-speed chase with the cops, his girlfriend seeing him on TV and calling the car phone ordering him not to get a scratch on her car, and his response of slamming on the brakes and getting the car run into from all directions by pursuing police.

Not a great way to keep that probation. Predictably, Crewe gets sent to prison for 3-5 where poor rich professional athletes just can’t get a break…the warden (James Cromwell) wants Crewe to put together a football team out of the available selection of inmates to give his guards (the best prison team in the league) a chance to warm up and eviscerate some amateurs before they get into the real games. Crewe respectfully declines…and is told not so respectfully that that isn’t an option. Unfortunately the guards, namely one Captain Knauer (William Fichtner), do not like the idea and are willing to take it out on the prisoners as a deterrent.

Finally everything gets worked out and Crewe begins forming his team with what he has available…a motley collection of some very mean and very large guys with absolutely no idea how to play football, but all eager for the chance to hurt the guards back.

Maybe it’s because I never have seen the original Longest Yard but I really loved this movie. It included some great actors (aside from the ones already mentioned, Burt Reynolds, Cloris Leachman, Nicholas Turturro, Chris Rock, and of course the cameo by Rob Schneider that’s customary in an Adam Sandler movie), veterans of the big screen and actual football players, wrestlers, and ex-cons amongst them.

While a serious role is not Adam Sandler’s trademark act I’ve seen him in increasingly “serious comedies” as time goes on (such as his role in Click, which is all fun and games until he realizes it’s irreversible) and I think he’s getting pretty good at them. In this role he melds the “funny man” with the serious as the flippant football star who’s obviously terminally self-centered and doesn’t think through the consequences of his actions until near the end. Burt Reynolds, for what little time he was actually in the movie, lent his unmistakable talent and charm to his role as a Heisman trophy winner who ended up punching the wrong guard…the one who’s now the warden…and getting stuck behind bars for much longer than had originally been planned.

Please remember that not all elements are supposed to be entertaining…it’s a matter of melding grim reality (drunk driving, prison, guard brutality) with unusual circumstances to make for an excellent film. Since I have not seen the original 1974 version of The Longest Yard I can’t say whether this version held true and was better or worse or what, but I can say that as a standalone film this is an excellent movie that has plenty of entertainment value and moves along nicely for pretty close to “not a dull moment”.
I’d like to think that the state of our justice system is a little better than portrayed in the movie but without any personal prison experience I can’t say whether that’s the case or not…at any rate, the depiction of guard brutality and internal corruption fit well into the film and undoubtedly really does happen in some prisons in the country if not all of them.

Overall this is one of my favorite recent films…my other half loves to subject me to endless empty-headed comedies so it’s a real treat when I actually get to see one that has some real substance and a purpose other than making people laugh. I can’t say how well anyone who saw the 1974 version will like this one, but I can say it’s a well put-together film that entertained more than just providing a few cheap laughs.