Barnes & Noble

When it comes to football, good-old-boy comedy, a grand confrontation with self-esteem, and some great don't-blink character turns, The Longest Yard scores on every down. Burt Reynolds, having established his big-screen credibility as a bow-and-arrow-toting macho man two years earlier in Deliverance, went back to his roots as a football player (he'd played at Florida State) in this comedy-cum-morality play from director Robert Aldrich (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, The Dirty Dozen). Reynolds plays a former professional quarterback who's now riding the bench in a state penitentiary, where the evil, conniving warden (Eddie Albert) pressures him into organizing a team of inmates to play against the prison's beefy guards. The guards moonlight as the warden's organized semipro team, so Reynolds's ragtag bunch shouldn't have a chance, but... Reynolds confronts the title's moral equivalent when the warden offers him an early release in exchange for throwing the big game. Film buffs can look for the ever-present Reynolds crony James Hampton as Caretaker; Bond's future "Jaws," Richard Kiel as Samson, and a charming beehive-haired turn by Bernadette Peters as the warden's secretary. While there are other powerful pigskin tales -- Brian's Song, Rudy -- the uneven playing field confronting Reynolds makes The Longest Yard a particularly satisfying tale. Charles Salzberg

All Movie Guide

Ex-football star Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds) ends up in a prison run by sadistic sports-nut Warden Hazen (Eddie Albert). Strong-armed into forming an inmate football team, Crewe manages to instill an esprit de corps previously lacking in the prisoners' lives. Besides, they now have the chance to beat the guards' football team, headed by the hissable Capt. Knauer (Ed Lauter). Hazen orders Crewe to throw the match; otherwise, Crewe will never get the pardon he's been promised. The football game that follows consumes nearly a third of the picture. Hal Erickson

Product Details

• UPC: 097360870831
• Source: PARAMOUNT