Movies like The Longest Yard (1974)
The best movies like The Longest Yard (1974) are The Longest Yard (2005), North Dallas Forty (1979) and Semi-Tough (1977). If The Longest Yard hooked you with its comedy and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedPapillon (1973)7.8/10 from 2,228 votes
- NewestThe Hammer (2007)Released 2007
The Longest Yard (2005)
Disgraced pro football quarterback Paul Crewe lands in a Texas federal penitentiary, where manipulative Warden Hazen recruits him to advise the institution's football team of prison guards. Crewe suggests a tune-up game which lands him quarterbacking a crew of inmates in a game against the guards. Aided by incarcerated ex-NFL coach and player Nate Scarborough, Crewe and his team must overcome not only the bloodthirstiness of the opposition, but also the corrupt warden trying to fix the game against them.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNorth Dallas Forty (1979)
A semi-fictional account of life as a professional football player. Loosely based on the Dallas Cowboys team of the early 1970s.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSemi-Tough (1977)
A three-way friendship between two free-spirited professional football players and the owner's daughter becomes compromised when two of them become romantically involved.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisPenitentiary (1979)
A hitchhiker named Martel Gordone gets in a fight with two bikers over a prostitute, and one of the bikers is killed. Gordone is arrested and sent to prison, where he joins the prison's boxing team in an effort to secure an early parole and to establish his dominance over the prison's toughest gang.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Tough Guys (1986)
Harry Doyle and Archie Lang are two old-time train robbers, who held up a train in 1956 and have been incarcerated for thirty years. After serving their time, they are released from jail and have to adjust to a new life of freedom. and soon realize that they still have the pizzazz when, picking up their prison checks at a bank, they foil a robbery attempt.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGreased Lightning (1977)
The true life story of Wendell Scott, the first black stock car racing driver to win an upper-tier NASCAR race.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStay Hungry (1976)
A dishonest businessman asks rich layabout Craig Blake to help him buy a gym, which will be demolished for a development project in Alabama. But after spending time with weightlifter Joe Santo and gym worker Mary Tate Farnsworth, Craig wants out of the deal. The property negotiations turn ugly, causing a brawl at the gym and a spectacle at a big bodybuilding meet, as Craig learns that it's not easy to turn your back on fair-weather friends.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisCool Hand Luke (1967)
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTerminal Island (1973)
After the U.S. Supreme Court banishes the death penalty, California decides to exile all convicted murderers to the remote island of San Bruno, overseen by a tyrannical camp leader who forces all female inmates into sex slavery.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
SnoozefestMovies like thisBrubaker (1980)
The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPapillon (1973)
A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBad Boys (1983)
Mick O'Brien is a young Chicago street thug torn between a life of petty crime and the love of his girlfriend. But when the heist of a local drug dealer goes tragically wrong Mick is sentenced to a brutal juvenile prison where violence is a rite of passage and respect is measured in vengeance.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBrian's Song (1971)
Based on the real-life relationship between teammates Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers and the bond established when Piccolo discovers that he is dying.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Last American Hero (1973)
A young hell raiser quits his moonshine business and tries to become the best NASCAR racer the south has ever seen. Loosely based on the true story of NASCAR driver Junior Johnson.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisStroker Ace (1983)
Stroker Ace, a champion NASCAR driver, is standing at the top of his career, but is getting fed up with having to do as he's told. In between rebelling against his sponsor (a fried chicken chain)'s promotion gimmicks (like making him dress up in giant chicken suit) he spends the rest of the movie trying to bed the buxom Pembrook.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
SnoozefestMovies like thisLock Up (1989)
Frank Leone is nearing the end of his prison term for a relatively minor crime. Just before he is paroled, however, Warden Drumgoole takes charge. Drumgoole was assigned to a hell-hole prison after his administration was publicly humiliated by Leone, and has now arrived on the scene to ensure that Leone never sees the light of day.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976)
Top baseball pitcher Bingo Long is fed up with how his Negro League team owner treats him, so he forms his own lineup, recruiting big-hitting Leon Carter and Charlie Snow, who dreams of playing in the majors. Boycotted by black teams, Long's outfit play minor league white teams, earning more attention as entertainers than as players. However, their success wins them a chance to play again in the Negro League, this time as equals.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Breaking Away (1979)
Dave, nineteen, has just graduated high school, with his three friends: the comical Cyril, the warm hearted but short-tempered Moocher, and the athletic, spiteful but good-hearted Mike. Now, Dave enjoys racing bikes and hopes to race the Italians one day, and even takes up the Italian culture, much to his friends' and parents' annoyance.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Gumball Rally (1976)
A group of people from different backgrounds have one thing in common: when they hear the world "gumball" whispered by one of the others, they know that it's time for the Gumball Rally: a no-holds barred, secret, winner-take-all rally across the USA.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMajor League (1989)
When Rachel Phelps inherits the Cleveland Indians from her deceased husband, she's determined to move the team to a warmer climate—but only a losing season will make that possible, which should be easy given the misfits she's hired. Rachel is sure her dream will come true, but she underestimates their will to succeed.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHard Times (1975)
In the depression, Chaney, a strong silent streetfighter, joins with Speed, a promoter of no-holds-barred street boxing bouts. They go to New Orleans where Speed borrows money to set up fights for Chaney, but Speed gambles away any winnings.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAmerican Flyers (1985)
When Dr. Marcus Sommers realizes that he and his troubled, estranged brother David may be prone a fatal brain disease that runs in their family, he decides to make peace with his sibling, and invites him on a trip to the Rockies. There, the brothers bond over their shared enthusiasm for cycling and decide to enter a grueling bike race through the mountains. However, Marcus' health soon begins to fail, and David must compete without his brother at his side.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Greatest (1977)
Muhammad Ali's life story up to the late 1970s, which includes his Olympic boxing triumphs as Cassius Clay, his conversion to Islam, his refusal of the Army draft and the legal battle after being stripped of his World Title.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Cadence (1990)
As punishment for drunken, rebellious behavior, a young white soldier is thrown into a stockade populated entirely by black inmates. But instead of falling victim to racial hatred, the soldier joins forces with his fellow prisoners and rises up against the insanely tyrannical and bigoted prison warden.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPit Stop (1969)
Rick Bowman, a drag racing street punk, comes to the attention of crafty businessman Grant Willard. Willard bails him out of jail and offers him sponsorship as a stock car driver. Bowman accepts and enters the demolition derby-adjacent world of "figure eight" racing. As Bowman moves up in the ranks, his regard for his friends slips-- giving way to outright obsession with becoming the best.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Hammer (2007)
Approaching forty, Ferro is unsatisfied with his life as a construction worker and part-time boxing instructor in Los Angeles, CA. After a successful bout with a young pro boxer, Ferro decides to don the gloves one last time. The movie recounts his unlikely quest for Olympic gold.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Jericho Mile (1980)
A runner, serving a life sentence at Folsom Prison, works at becoming the world's fastest miler and wins a chance to compete for a spot on the Olympic team.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBirdman of Alcatraz (1962)
After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOver the Top (1987)
Lincoln Hawk a hard-luck big-rig trucker takes us under the glaring Las Vegas lights for all the boisterous action of the World Armwrestling Championship. Relying on wits and willpower, Hawk tries to rebuild his life by capturing the first-place prize money, and the love of the son he abandoned years earlier into the keeping of his rich, ruthless father-in-law.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBustin' Loose (1981)
After ex-con Joe Braxton violates his probation, he is given a second chance. All he has to do is drive a group of special kids across the country.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Longest Yard?
The closest matches to The Longest Yard are The Longest Yard (2005), North Dallas Forty (1979) and Semi-Tough (1977). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Longest Yard?
People who watched The Longest Yard most often go on to The Longest Yard (2005), North Dallas Forty (1979) and Semi-Tough (1977).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Longest Yard?
Papillon (1973), rated 7.8/10 by 2,228 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Longest Yard?
The Hammer (2007) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Longest Yard?
Yes: The Longest Yard (2005), North Dallas Forty (1979) and Semi-Tough (1977).
How are movies similar to The Longest Yard chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Longest Yard, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.