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Movie Review - The Longest Yard(2005 ) An American Sports Comedy
Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler) is a former NFL player dishonored for shaving points in a big match, getting in an argument with his well-off girlfriend Lena (Courtney Cox) about his failure. He locks her in a closet, gets drunk, and goes riding in her Bentley Continental GT throughout San Diego. After totally damaging the car, he gets caught for three years in Ellenville Penitentiary in Texas, as it was set by the prison's superintendent Hazen (James Cromwell). In jail, the warden asks Paul to help the prison guards' football players. After being reluctant a bit, Paul decides to help him. He informs the warden that what his team needs is a tune-up game. This gives the warden an idea: Paul, with the aid of fellow inmate Caretaker (Chris Rock), will make a team out of the prisoners for them to play as their tune-up game. He starts off with a weakly prepared players, before being noticed by another inmate, former football player Nate Scarborough (Reynolds), who decides to aid him by coaching the team. Paul, Nate, and Caretaker find a rating scheme on the criminals (up to five stars, depending on how prone to aggression they are). They all set out to find and engage some five star prisoners: linebacker Joey Battle (Goldberg); fullback Turley (Singh Rana); and at safety, Torres (Lobo Sebastian). Paul realizes he needs more players. Caretaker advises that it is due to their lack of "brothers", as they only have one currently on their players defensive lineman Switowski (Sapp), an brainless, child-like, and friendly but huge strongman.They go to the black prisoners leader Deacon Moss (Irvin), who confesses that none of them want to play on his team because of Paul's point-shaving account. So Paul challenges them to a 1 on 1 basketball game where if Paul wins, the men will join the players. They play basketball and call their own fouls, with Paul getting physically punished during the match. Despite Paul losing, one of the black inmates, Earl Megget (Nelly), is impressed by Paul's flexibility and joins the players. Megget becomes the players's running back by impressing Paul with his running skill. After a tip from Unger (David Patrick Kelly) that Paul and Megget are the only real nasty bullying on the players, Captain Knauer (Fichtner), the guards' quarterback, decides that the guards should try to stop Megget by trying to get him to assault one of them and sticking them in lone confinement. Three guards Dunham (Austin), Garner (Bosworth) and Engelheart (Nash) try to inflame Megget by using racial slurs and making him pick up books they dropped on the ground frequently. The guards give up after he does not react to their pestering. Seeing this, Moss and Cheeseburger Eddy (Crews), convince the rest of black inmates to join the football team. The warden and guards go to farthest lengths to stop Paul's squad, even flooding their field, but the players overcomes these problems. Caretaker advises that since the guards have been playing dirty that the inmates should exchange Engelheart's anabolic steroids for estrogen tablets, examining x-rays of guards with broken bones, and thieving tapes of the guards older games. The guards Garner, Engelheart, Holland and Lambert (Romanowski) then make a decision to do something about Paul, and have Unger plant a bomb, disguised as a radio, in his cell. After the closing day of training for the big match, Caretaker leaves early and places a gift for Paul in his cell and unintentionally sets the bomb off, and is killed in the explosion. During game day, the prisoners conquer a bad opening and end the first half with the score tied. The superintendent is annoyed, and informs Paul that if he doesn't lose then he would be framed for the murder of Caretaker. Paul says spitefully, "Fine, but you get a 2 touchdown lead and you coast". The superintendent agrees to Paul's face, but he tells the guards' quarterback to get ahead by three touchdowns and cause as much trouble as possible. After the guards score two touchdowns (and Paul steps out faking hurt), they start injuring players before scoring a third touchdown. After the guards injure two of the players, Paul goes back in. The inmates ignore Paul, letting him get sacked twice and forcing him to run the ball himself. After losing his helmet and still getting the first down, Paul accepts his sabotage and they trust him again. They get back in it, but Megget gets injured. Scarborough comes in for one play as substitute, and scores a touchdown off a hoax play involving a fumble called a Fumblerooski. They decide to go for the two point exchange, and they win. They get up to the line and seem to be puzzled, and Paul and Coach start arguing. The play is really a hoax, and then Moss gets the instant and passes it to Paul, who scores the winning conversion. Finally Captain Knauer respects Paul's move and lets him know he will testify that Paul had nothing to do with Caretaker's death. The superintendent comes over and begins to scold Captain Knauer for losing a fixed game and finds that Paul is heading towards the exit along with the fans. Pulling a sniper over, he demands that Paul be killed for trying to flee. The sniper is reluctant because of the many people near Paul, so the warden grabs the gun and passes it to Knauer, demanding that he should take the shot. Knauer sights up Paul, but hesitates, calling out Paul's name several times to get him to stay. Paul does stop, but he was actually going to pick up the ball and head back. Knauer angrily hands the rifle back to the warden and exits. Paul and Scarborough go towards the locker room and agree that they should tell the others where Unger is hiding. As the warden watches them leave, Moss and Battle pour a cooler of Gatorade on Hazen in a sham of a typical football game celebration It was released on March 27, 2005. The picture did well at the box office. Its $47.6 million dollar opening weekend was the largest of Sandler's career and only second to The Day After Tomorrow. It was rated 4.8/10 from 162 reviews counted by Rotten Tomatoes. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Mitsha is a new writer. Her main job is writing articles about movies. MItsha writes on movie reviews and the trend. |
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