The first thing that struck me about The Longest Yard was how *cheap* it looked--and not just the rich tart Burt is sleeping with in the opening. The inside sets were full of ugly wood panelling and chintzy curtains and seemed way too small, like the movie was shot inside a mobile home. It's only after Burt gets to the football field that things start to open up. And there, of course, he's able to reclaim the dignity he squandered on the outside. To do so he must exorcise the demons of his past, sacrifice his own interests for the sake of his fellow inmates, heal the prison's racial divide, and stand up to the power that seeks to crush his spirit. All these goals are reached as the movie rushes downfield in a fun but disorganized run of 120 minutes.
I had expected this movie to be about class, but it was more about being a man. The two are not entirely separate, of course, and it's significant that while on the outside Burt is oppressed by women, money-men and cops, on the inside it's just cops. One of the things I liked most was how the warden and his captain are usually accompanied by the trappings of squaresville authority: They had motivational slogans on their walls and they would mouth them self-imporantly, with an American flag visible over their shoulder. At the right hand of the warden was a silent assitant (possibly the the prison pastor, since I think he was reading the last rites at a prisoner's funeral) ready to tape-record choice snippets of the warden's speeches. In a time when most of America seems ready to swallow whole the slogans of God, Company and Country, it was nice to see in this movie some relics of an era more independent, more suspicious of authority.
That's probably not how the filmmakers would have put it, though. They would have said that the heroes of the movie were just showing that they had balls--the two things the world can never beat out of you, according to one of the prisoners. In the end, the movie is not about social change. It's not like any of the men get out of prison because they won a football game, like in John Huston's Victory (1981). But resisting emasculation is its own reward. 'Fuck you, boy!', the warden yells at Burt after the game. Burt's smirking reply is 'Not today, boss.'
It's interesting to note how race is played in the movie, too. It's almost like a 'white pride' movie, because the white characters are in many ways modeling the resistance of black men against racism. All the characters, black or white, are called 'boy' by the guards, and at a crucial moment the sacrifice of a black player inspires Burt to get back in the game. The guards try and pit the races against each other, but the prisoners are able to see that the struggle for manhood is a shared struggle.
The movie seemed put together in a slap-dash manner. Either it was hacked to pieces in editing, or the continuity man was asleep during most of the filming. The back-stories of the inmates--Burt included--are hardly touched on at all, and some of the cons on the football team are introduced with a depth that seems a set up for later scenes on the field, but those scenes never come and players by and large loose any individuality once in uniform. In the opening, the shrewish girlfriend warns Burt not to take her Masserati, but he drives off in a Citroen, clearly marked as such. Maybe he listened to her, and took her *other* car? And in the football game, Dick Keil, the Bond movie villain guy, is at some points wearing a sling on one of his arms, but it's never explained.
Some nice touches:
- cons' cheerleaders (where'd they come from?) at the game sing 'Born Free.'
- Bernadette Peters as the warden's secretary, wearing a huge soft-serve hairdo.
- after losing the football game, the captain asks the warden, "Where's your damn power theory now?!" [Edward G. Robinson voice] Yeah, see .
- credits thank Gov. Jimmy Carter for allowing them to film in Georgia prisons.
