Good, but I've seen this before

Rating: Null/10 (17 June 2002)

While not a bad movie, Victory does rip off The Longest Yard on several occasions. We have a former football player in prison, one for GTA, the other as a POW. The captors propose an exhibition with the prisoners. In both cases, the captors see it as an opportunity to prove their superiority. In the case of the convicts, it's a chance to get in a few good licks on the guards. The POW's, possibly a chance to escape. The captains convince the captors to provide the teams with better rations, equipment, secret training, and their pick from the indentured population. Both captains have difficulty recruiting a certain group of prisoners, the difference being that the Wermacht hinders the Russians from being recruited, the Prison Guards inadvertently encourage the black prisoners to join. I can't speak for the producers of Victory so I don't know if they ever saw The Longest Yard. But the fact that the latter came out in 1974, the former in 1981, demonstrates which is the original.