Is there really any mileage in American football movies for non-US audiences?

Rating: 4/10 (6 September 2005)

With an all star cast including Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Burt Reynolds and ex-convict Edward Bunker, this re-make of legendary Robert Aldrich's film about a football match by convicts, The Longest Yard would seem a sure-fire winner. For fans of American Football who can never get enough, it probably is, but how well does it translate to audiences unfamiliar with the sport? Non-Americans barely understand or recognise the game, so for them there needs to be something else with which to engage (unless we were given a proper briefing, which we're not). American Football bears little relation to Soccer, the mainstream game of the rest of the world. In Britain, we are beset with the unfortunate association of hooliganism with British football, we might be forgiven for looking across the Atlantic to America, where sports heroes are often role models (not just in the U.S., but in Latin America as well).
Our hero, Adam Sandler, has been dropped from the professional game for fixing a result. He goes out and crashes his girlfriend's car spectacularly (while drunk) and lands up in prison. After various rounds of blackmail and counter-blackmail, he is persuaded to lead the prison football team against the prison guards team. The film straddles sports and comedy uneasily.
When someone makes a movie about our favourite hobby, we tend to find jokes much funnier simply because we allow ourselves to be carried away on a sympathetic wave of feelgood enjoyment. For others, the jokes need to stand up on their own merit. Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, both brilliant comedians in their own right, are out of their familiar territory with this movie. Many opportunities for belly laughs are missed by inept timing and lack of pacing. The cross-dresser cheerleaders should have been riotous, but they are badly introduced and then overplayed. A constant stream of jokes about MacDonalds and Coca-Cola become monotonous to all but the thickest-skinned, beer-bellied macho men. There are the occasional lame attempts to portray Sandler as a sex-icon, whether as the prey of the prison chief's wife or rolling around (in slow-motion) in the mud. Is he really that gorgeous? For more serious movie goers, this film may simply represent a grandstanding of all the bad things America has to offer the world  sadistic, overcrowded prisons, steroid-chomping would-be athletes, and prison guards who are effectively the worst type of role model. The sad thing is that the real situation is probably much worse. The Longest Yard accepts all this with utter bravado  perhaps just how George W Bush would like to see prisons run.
The U.S. has overtaken Russia as the world's most aggressive jailer. When local jails are included in the American tally, the U.S. locks up nearly 700 people per 100,000, compared with 102 for Canada, 132 for England and Wales, 85 for France and a paltry 48 in Japan. Roughly 2m Americans are currently behind bars, with some 4.5m on parole or on probation. At least 3m Americans are ex-convicts who have served their sentences and are no longer under the control of the justice system, and one estimate says that some 13m Americans  7% of the adult population  have been found guilty of a serious crime. Roughly one in five black men has been incarcerated at some point in his life; one in three has been convicted of a felony.
If this wasn't bad enough, there is a small hitch with America's policy of imprisoning more people than any other country on the planet: most have to be released at some point, even if mass incarceration makes a very temporary reduction in crime levels. America's homicide rate is still five to seven times higher than most industrialised countries. The 'correctional facilities' singularly fail to correct: three in four prisoners will be convicted of another crime within three yearsand three out of five will be back in prison. This keenness to lock people up is matched by a complete lack of interest in them when they get out. Britain seems to follow the U.S. lead: "Prison works", declared Michael Howard, addressing his first party conference as home secretary. Really? Ten years later, the prison population increased by 60% to but overall levels of serious crime recorded by the police doubled.
There is no incentive for prisons, whether privately or state run, to invest in reform. Their benefits need to be linked to re-offending rates  exactly the opposite to the current situation (where jobs are ensured by high offending). In America, the political agenda is even stronger. The guards unions make large donations to political parties, and their salaries and benefits have been suitably looked after in return. Offenders, on the other hand, are usually barred from voting and from many jobs, something which is generally seen as helping Republican votes. In Virginia and Kentucky, one in six black men cannot vote.
Edward Bunker (who played himself in Reservoir Dogs and died some time before the release of Longest Yard) made a movie called Animal Factory that was a tough and convincing look at prison life. The Longest Yard is not tough, convincing, or even that funny except for die-hard American Football fans. Adam Sandler is known to be a big Yankees fan  one wonders if there isn't a modicum of fantasy-fulfilment in this Big-Mac, Quarter-Pounder-With-Cheese no-brainer of a movie.