The Longest Yard (Lockdown Edition) (DVD)

Only days before the Adam Sandler remake of the classic Burt Reynolds film I am finally getting a chance to see what all the fuss is about.

The Longest Yard is considered by many as the greatest football movie of all time as Burt Reynolds stars as Paul Crewe a washed up football star who has just been sent to jail for leading the police on a wild goose chase in his wealthy wife's Mazerati. Now behind bars he has been coerced by jailhouse warden to put together a rag tag bunch of inmates and form a football team to play against his team of guards in order to get them ready for their semi-pro league.

So if you are like me and had not seen this movie yet, you are thinking, "How the hell can that make up the best football movie of all-time?" Then again you have to consider the competition, there really are no great football movies out there; Any Given Sunday, Varsity Blues, Rudy, Friday Night Lights. Yeah, there are a few that are good in there, but none of them really stand out as great, baseball movies seem to lay claim to the greats as there aren't going to be many living up to The Natural.

So with this in mind I sat down to watch and was pleasantly surprised with how good the film was and also how good this Special Edition DVD is, considering the movie is 31 years old and there wasn't much to work with, but thanks to a few sportswriters, Burt Reynolds and writer/producer Albert S. Ruddy we get a pretty damned good DVD.

As for the features you are going to get a couple of making-of looks at the film in two featurettes, which are both pretty short but have enough good stuff there to be worth the listen and you also get a look at the upcoming Sandler remake, but the best feature is undoubtedly the audio commentary with Ruddy and Reynolds.

These two men sit down and relive the good old days as if it happened only a few months ago, both of them remembering something interesting about almost every single scene that is worth a listen. The best comes as you get to the football and Reynolds starts talking about the boys on both sides of the ball, primarily remembering Green Bay linebacker Ray Nitschke and his on field taunts. Reynolds quotes teh bigt man saying, "I heard Ray say, 'Don't hurt Burt,' which brought a smile to my face, but then I heard him say, 'That's my job.'"

Overall, I was highly impressed with this package considering it is an obvious attempt to make some money off the soon-to-be-released remake, but at least they put together some new featurettes and a brand new commentary to make it worth consumer's money. As for whether or not this is the best football movie of all time, I am not quite ready to concede that title although I am damn close.