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MEAN MACHINE Send This Review to a Friend
It doesn't matter that "Mean Machine" is based on "The Longest Yard," the 1974 film directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Burt Reynolds. For better or worse, this British version stands on its own. This time around the prison is a brutal British one in which the convicts and the prison guards are equally vicious and the prison governor, played villainously by David Hemmings, is thoroughly corrupt.
Enter Vinnie Jones as Danny Meehan, a former soccer star who blew his career by throwing a game. In prison on a drunken assault charge, he's a ready target for cons and guards alike. But everyone is aware of his talent and he is tapped to coach and whip into shape a convict team that will play the prison staff. Riding on the game is the self-esteem of the inmates, the power of the godfather-like con who rules the prison and runs a widespread betting operation from inside, the finances of the prison governor deep in betting debts, and the future of Meehan who is threatened with a longer term if he doesn't throw the match.
"Mean Machine" is permeated with violence, and the match turns into a brawling, crunching affair. The set-up is such that we are programmed to root for the cons. As bad a lot as they are, the screws come off worse. One sympathetic character is the elderly Doc, a prison veteran played by David Kelly of "Waking Ned Devine," who befriends Meehan and shows him the ropes.
Director Barry Skolnick injects plenty of nasty action, but the film never rises to a level beyond the obvious prisoner-against-the-system genre. One can get caught up in the face-off on the field, and there's humor in the violence, but there's not much beyond that. A Paramount Classics release.
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