The Longest Yard

The Longest Yard is an outstanding action drama, combining the brutish excitement of football competition with the brutalities of contemporary prison life. Burt Reynolds asserts his genuine star power, here as a former football pro forced to field a team under blackmail of warden Eddie Albert.

Deftly employing split-screen and slow-motion techniques, Aldrich makes the most of Tracy Keenan Wynn's incisive script, aided by fine cinematography and tight Oscar-nominated editing.

This Burt Reynolds offering is a look at both prison life and the sport, and offers two hallmarks of classic 70's cinema: gritty, no holds barred action – and Reynolds' chest hair.

For all its bone-crunching collisions, it's almost irresistibly good-natured and funny.

The themes are dignity and compromise, freedom and betrayal; if it all gets bogged down occasionally in its macho-violence trip, it's nevertheless very exciting, very witty, and elevated above its action-movie status by Aldrich's deliberate references to Nixon in Albert's characterisation of the warden.

What saves it, aside from good performances by Burt Reynolds and a thundering herd of supporting grotesques, is, of all things, a tough, tiny nut of valid social criticism.

Though The Yard is a terrible picture, I'll admit to having unwillingly enjoyed some of the football practice and parts of the final game —even though it's much too long.