Lost in the dream machine

Mean Machine suffers from a kind of schizophrenia, unable to decide whether it's a rough 'n' tough drama about life behind bars or a soppy tale of bad boy come good. But its star, Vinnie Jones, has no such problems.

The footballer with a propensity for violence on the pitch plays... a footballer banged up for drunken assault. His character, Danny Meehan, had been England captain until banned for match-fixing, and it was his post-ban despair that led to the aforementioned three-year sentence. Now, courtesy of the prison's corrupt governor, Meehan is the inmates' coach for a guards versus cons game. Only one problem: none of his fellow inmates can stand the flash footballer who had it all and threw the lot away.

Robert Aldrich's 1974 offbeat comedy The Mean Machine (soon to be re-released on DVD as The Longest Yard), starring Burt Reynolds, gains nothing from this heavy-handed remake, which alternates weak humour - the inmates are a bunch of unfit, mainly stupid louts, topped off by The Monk (Jason Statham), the meanest, stupidest lout of all - with real violence. Jones is - well, Jones; he's reasonably watchable but it's hard to forgive his character the dirty behaviour excused by a lame speech about the high-octane, irresponsibilityinducing nature of football fame. See the original.

Mean Machine
Cert: cert15