''Mean Machine'' is a 2001 British sports comedy film directed by Barry Skolnick and starring former footballer Vinnie Jones. The film is an

adaptation In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the p ...

of the 1974 American film '' The Longest Yard'', featuring

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

rather than

American football American football, referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada and also known as gridiron football, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular American football field, field with goalposts at e ...

Plot

Danny "The Mean Machine" Meehan ( Vinnie Jones) is a retired footballer and former captain of

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

who was banned from football for life for fixing an unspecified match they played against

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. In the present day, after a long drinking session, he drives recklessly to a local bar where he is pursued by police. Inside the bar, when asked to take a breathalyser test, he attacks two police officers and is arrested. He is later convicted and sentenced to three years in Longmarsh prison. Inside, his status as a

celebrity Celebrity is a condition of fame and broad public recognition of a person or group due to the attention given to them by mass media. The word is also used to refer to famous individuals. A person may attain celebrity status by having great w ...

immediately puts him at odds with the guards, who brutally beat him onto arrival. The prison governor then pulls strings to ensure Meehan serves his sentence in Longmarsh as the head coach of the prison wardens' football team. However, Meehan declines, and instead trains a team of other convicts to play against the wardens. Meehan is met with an unwelcome reception from his cellmates, Raj, Jerome, and Trojan. Outside, Meehan meets and befriends an elderly convict, Doc, who teaches him how to survive in prison. While cleaning the yards with Doc, Meehan is introduced to Sykes, a

gangster A gangster (informally gangsta) is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Most gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from ''Organized crime, mob'' and the suffix ''wikt:-ster, -st ...

and one of the most respected inmates in the prison. Sykes also shows aggression towards Meehan, revealing he lost a large amount of money betting on the England game he had fixed. Later, in the prison cafeteria, Meehan makes another ally, meeting the prison's fast-talking contraband dealer "Massive". Meehan and Massive begin the recruitment process for his team, but struggle, as many of the inmates are reluctant to join due to both Sykes' influence over the prison and their hatred for Meehan as a cheat. As Meehan tries and fails to form a team, Massive is playing football in a prison hallway, when a

racist Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...

guard approaches him and assaults him as the other inmates watch in horror. Meehan lunges at the guard and protects Massive from further beating, earning the respect of many of the other inmates. His team includes a violent maximum-security inmate named "The Monk". Meanwhile, the warden gets himself into trouble with "Barry the Bookie," an unlicensed bookmaker who was recommended to him by Sykes. After being threatened on the phone by Barry, the warden decides to try to make back the money he owes by betting on the prison guards' team. A psychotic inmate named Nitro accuses Meehan of being a snitch. Meehan gets ambushed in the showers and threatened but refuses to tell, earning the trust of both Sykes' men and Sykes himself. To win the lost money back, Sykes bribes Meehan: all is forgiven if his team wins. Angry that his plan to have Meehan killed failed, Nitro, a bomb expert, offers to have Meehan killed in exchange for a transfer to a lower security prison which one of the guards, Ratchett, agrees to. Nitro crafts a bomb in his cell and places it in Meehan locker. Meehan and the rest of the team are going over tactics in one of the cells, when Doc arrives at the cell and is killed by the bomb. Nitro is subsequently sent to another facility, but not to the minimum-security prison he was promised, but to a mental health facility. The match starts shortly after Doc's death. At half time, the inmates' team is leading 1–0, and the morale is high until the governor attempts to blackmail Meehan, accusing him of being an accessory to Doc's murder and threatening to sentence him to 20 years unless he throws the match. At first, he puts his own interests before that of the team's, deliberately playing poorly and faking injury to be taken off the pitch. As the final moments of the game tick down, he redeems himself, bravely using a square-ball to fellow inmate 'Billy the Limpet' to win the game for the cons. Afterward, the Captain of the Guards, Burton, refuses to co-operate with the governor's attempts to get revenge on Meehan, instead congratulating him on the win. The governor's vehicle explodes, and Sykes informs him that he and Barry the Bookie will retaliate if he tries anything. A victorious Meehan and Massive walk triumphantly across the pitch.

Cast

The film included actors who had formerly played professional football, including three players who were teammates with the film's star, Vinnie Jones, at different times in their careers. Charlie Hartfield (prisoners' team in the film) played with Jones for Sheffield United, while Paul Fishenden and Brian Gayle (guards' team in the film) played with Jones for

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. Nevin Saroya (prisoners' team) was once a Brentford youth team player and Perry Digweed (guard's team), played as a goalkeeper primarily for Brighton & Hove Albion, although in the film, he is a defender. Ryan Giggs, then playing for

Manchester United Manchester United Football Club, commonly referred to as Man United (often stylised as Man Utd) or simply United, is a professional association football, football club based in Old Trafford (area), Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, Engl ...

and the Wales national football team, appears briefly (at minute 77:00) as a warden.

Production

Producer Matthew Vaughn, while looking for a film vehicle to highlight ex-football star Vinnie Jones, came across director

Robert Aldrich Robert Burgess Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. An iconoclastic and maverick '' auteur'' working in many genres during the Golden Age of Hollywood, he directed main ...

's 1974 American football comedy ''The Longest Yard''. Jones, who was known for rough play and off-field rowdiness, seemed a natural for the lead role. ''Mean Machine'' was filmed from April to June 2001. Most of the prison scenes were filmed at HM Prison Oxford, and the match was filmed at The Warren, the former home ground of

Yeading Yeading ( ) is a settlement in west London, forming part of the London Borough of Hillingdon, having been developed after the Second World War. Etymology Yeading is very early Saxon and was originally ''Geddingas'' or ''Geddinges'', meaning " ...

. The Warren is located in Hayes.

Release and reception

''Mean Machine'' was released in United Kingdom cinemas on 28 December 2001 and according to the box office database website

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, grossed $2,288,365 during its opening weekend with a total domestic gross of $6,288,153 (as of 27 January 2002). The film was released in the United States on 22 February 2002 with total a gross of $92,770. Total foreign gross (excluding the United States) was $929,283 (as of 23 February 2003).

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

gave the film a score of 45%, indicating "mixed or average reviews". A major criticism of the film was that it was unintentionally funny and led to "prison cliches". Jamie Russell of the BBC wrote, " keeps its tongue welded firmly in its cheek. The scriptwriters have enough sense to replay every funny moment from the original, while also adding a couple of innovations of their own. The final soccer game is definitely the high point of the proceedings, if only because it lets the star do what he does best - play some very dirty football." While A. O. Scott of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' wrote, "Reviewing ''The Longest Yard'' in The New York Times 28 years ago, Nora Sayre objected to its clumsiness and violence, but admitted to being entertained by the football sequences. Watching this remake, I had the opposite response: the story was moderately engaging and moved swiftly, but the long soccer match at the end bored me silly. Perhaps this is just American chauvinism, or perhaps that kind of football is inherently less cinematic than ours. It's certainly no less brutal."

References

External links