Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

The Longest Yard Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 1, 2021

1974's The Longest Yard was a fairly big hit and remains one of the highlights of Burt Reynolds' illustrious screen career. The film pitted prisoners against guards in a rough-and-tumble game of full contact prison yard football, and the story was rife with worthwhile subtext and humor. For this 2005 remake, Adam Sandler stars in the Reynolds role in a film that may not be as funny, biting, gritty, or even graceful as the original, but it's every bit as mean and tough. Like most remakes it loses some of the underpinning context and purpose that made the original better than the sum of its parts, but this is nevertheless a worthwhile follow-up that holds to the same story and spirit even if it can't match the underlying sophistication that made the original one of the most memorable Sports films of its decade.

When disgraced ex-NFL quarterback Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler) is sent to prison in West Texas following a drunken high speed pursuit, his incarceration takes a turn on day one when Warden Rudolph Hazen (James Cromwell) attempts to enlist Crewe's help in whipping his prison guard football team into game shape ahead of a big season opening game. Crewe is hesitant at first but a week in hellish solitary confinement finally convinces him otherwise. His solution: build a team comprised of inmates and give the prison guards a "tune-up" game ahead of the season opener. Crewe, along with fellow inmates Caretaker (Chris Rock) and Nate Scarborough (Burt Reynolds), assembles a ragtag group of muscled men who are eager to take a shot at the guards and finally, for sixty minutes, level the prison playing field.

There’s something of an OJ Simpson vibe to the film’s open as the story follows Crewe on the run from the cops. Of course, it’s more of a high-speed chase rather than a slower one, and Crewe is cruising around in a Bentley rather than in a Bronco, which is silver rather than white…and nobody has been murdered…but yeah, maybe it’s not OJ redux, but the whole “NFL star running from the cops” thing holds, anyway. But it’s just a vehicle (literally) to shift the story to the prison yard and get to the task of building the ragtag team and prepping the squad for play against the more experienced, but not meaner (and maybe not more muscled) guards. The film builds around the game not played – and won or lost – based on skill but rather based on emotion. Every player, on both sides of the ball, plays with their own chip on their shoulder, or their own physical or psychological limitation. It’s a battle of will as much as it is a battle of shoulder pads and turf, of muscle and mayhem. How the game ends only the film’s final few minutes know for sure, but it’s going to be a bloody, hard-hitting, foul-mouthed affair to be sure with more on the line that a statistic in the win column. No, this one becomes about pride, and pride might be the biggest motivating factor of all.

The Longest Yard does a good job of balancing the rather large assortment of characters that are critical to the film’s structure. While it cannot afford to go in depth into too many of them, the audience feels like it knows all of the main players and a good number of the side peripheral players on both sides of the ball to keep the humor content and the game’s (and the lead up to the game) dramatic flow playing well, too. While many of those support personnel are one-trick ponies, they’re well defined in their singular character line and usually have someone to play off of on the other side of the ball. Sandler is a delight as Crewe. He’s no Burt Reynolds, and can’t quite bring the same machismo to the part, but he brings a very well balanced performance of humor, drama, and characterization to the role. Reynold returns as, essentially, a “consultant” for the team and is one of many familiar faces in a star-studded affair that brings both screen and sports personalities together in one of the richest casts of the decade.

The Longest Yard Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Paramount snaps The Longest Yard onto Blu-ray with an overall pleasing, if not slightly fumbled, 1080p transfer. The picture's color temperature runs obviously warm. Flesh tones take on an orange shading and the entire spectrum favors something of an orange/yellow/red tinge. But the colors are bold and stable within this temperature, including the contrast between the white prison guard jerseys and the black Mean Machine prisoner jerseys. There's a good stability to blue skies, green grass, and the earthen and otherwise tonally uninteresting prison structure and the immediate world around it. Details are solid. The picture is nicely filmic, holding to a natural grain structure (albeit looking a bit noisy as well) that offers stable, accurate details on faces, clothes, and environments. There is no evidence of hardcore scrubbing or texture flattening. There are no serious source flaws or encode anomalies to report. This is a solid Blu-ray start to finish.

The Longest Yard Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Longest Yard features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The track lacks the sort of intimate fidelity and perfect sound engineering of more modern films, but even if it's not quite so precise it is full and agreeably positioned throughout the film. Din inside a packed prison cafeteria draws the listener into the location, and when a brawl breaks out, the intensified, frantic cues increase in volume without sacrificing clarity. Sounds are well capable of extending through the stage during various rough-and-tumble prison yard and practice scenes and, of course, the big game offers big, amplified sound that combines hard hits and crowd din with excellent immersion and clarity. Musical engagement is in fine form for width and clarity. Dialogue is clear and reliably positioned in the center.

The Longest Yard Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Paramount brings The Longest Yard to Blu-ray with a good number of legacy extras. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

• First Down and Twenty-Five to Life (480i, window box, 20:56): A basic behind-the-scenes that covers a broad array of content, including shooting locations and stories from the set, story, cast and characters, NFL role models for the players, wardrobe, making the football scenes, and plenty more. The supplement crams a lot of material into 20 minutes.
• The Care & Feeding of Pro Athletes (480i, window box, 5:28): Feeding and hydrating the cast during the film.
• Lights, Camera, Touchdown! (480i, window box, 5:40): Shooting the football action.
• Extra Points with Commentary by Director Peter Segal (480i, window box, 4:33 total runtime): Exploring some of the film's visual effects construction. Included are Ride Along, Gearing Up, Hornet's Nest, Ping Pong, and Crowd Control.
• Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary by Peter Segal (480i, window box, 6:13 total runtime): Included are Hopscotch (ext/alt), Huddle (ext/alt), Broken Nose (ext/alt), Chicken Dinner (Deleted), Battle & Knauer (ext/alt), Englehart Butt Slap (Deleted), Red McCombs -- Vikings Owner (Deleted), Hurting Now (Deleted), and Ms. Tucker Tag (Deleted).
• Music Video (480i, window box, 4:31): "Errtime" by Nelly.
• Here Comes the Boom (Wrap Reel) (480i, window box, 2:42): Scenes from the film set to music.
• Fumbles and Stumbles (Gag Reel) (480i, window box, 3:55): Humorous moments from the shoot.
• Theatrical Trailers: Trailers for Necessary Roughness (480i, 1.78:1, 2:26), North Dallas Forty (480i, 1.78:1, 3:02), Varsity Blues (1080p, 1.78:1, 2:24), and the 1974 version of The Longest Yard (480i, 1.78:1, 4:04).

The Longest Yard Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Longest Yard has a long ways to go to match the original, at least in terms of capturing the same dramatic essence and exploring the same context that runs underneath the story. This film is far more superficial, but it's still a solid and fun picture in its own right. Sandler is well cast, though certainly not as inspired as Reynolds in the original, and he's surrounded by a motley crew of one-shot, yet still well-defined, castmates. This is a very entertaining film and a worthwhile compliment to the original. Sadly, Paramount has yet to release the original on Blu-ray in the United States (but there is a region free Australian release). This would have been the perfect time to bring it to Blu-ray, but the studio has at least done well with this remake. Its picture and sound presentations are very good and the disc includes a handful of legacy extras. Recommended.