Retrospective Film Review

The Longest Yard (1974) • 50 Years Later — American virtues in a simplistic film made in complicated times

A sadistic warden asks a former pro quarterback, now serving time in his prison, to put together a team of inmates to take on the guards.

At a time as revolutionary as 1974, it seems strange that a film as uncomplicated as The Longest Yard could have been made. In the same year that The Conversation, The Parallax View, and Chinatown challenged their country’s authority figures, The Longest Yard was a film that extolled the virtues of American tradition, national values, and masculinity.

What one thing connects all three of these? Football, of course. After Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds) is sent to prison for drink-driving, reckless endangerment, and assaulting a police officer, Warden Rudolph Hazen (Eddie Albert) requests his services as an esteemed ex-football player. Tasked with turning the convicts into a competent team so that they can play against the prison guards, Paul only has a month to pull off the job… and…