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Mean Machine (film)

Mean Machine
Mean Machine poster.JPG
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Barry Skolnick
Produced by Matthew Vaughn
Guy Ritchie (executive)
Screenplay by Tracy Keenan Wynn
Charlie Fletcher
Chris Baker
Andrew Day
Story by Albert S. Ruddy
Starring Vinnie Jones
David Kelly
David Hemmings
Ralph Brown
Jason Flemyng
Danny Dyer
Jason Statham
Music by John Murphy
Cinematography Alex Barber
Edited by Eddie Hamilton
Dayn Williams
Production
company
SKA Films
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date
  • December 26, 2001 (2001-12-26)
Running time
99 minutes
Country United Kingdom
United States
Language English
Box office $7,310,206

Mean Machine is a 2001 British comedy-drama film directed by Barry Skolnick. It stars former footballer Vinnie Jones. The film is an adaptation of the 1974 American film The Longest Yard, featuring association football rather than American football. It also reunites most of the cast who have starred in the Guy Ritchie blockbusters and Snatch.

Danny "The Mean Machine" Meehan (Vinnie Jones), a former captain of the England national football team who was banned from football for life for fixing a match between England and Germany (the England Football Team's greatest European rivals), is sentenced to three years in Longmarsh prison for assaulting two police officers after a long drinking session and driving recklessly to a local bar.

Once inside, he is immediately beaten up by the prison guards for misbehaving, and is subsequently approached by the prison governor. The governor offers Meehan a job as coach of the prison wardens' football team; not wanting to make enemies with the other prisoners, Meehan declines, and instead offers to train a team consisting of other inmates, who will take on the wardens in a practice match. Meehan then recruits the resident contraband dealer, Massive, as his right-hand man, and receives advice from an elderly convict, Doc, who teaches Meehan prison lore and warns Meehan to avoid making mistakes by revealing he was in prison for killing an enemy as well as the enemy's wife and child with a grenade.

Meehan wins the respect of the other inmates after he attacks an officer, Mr. Ratchett, who is severely beating Massive, and is then occupied with the task of training up his team of cons, including a maximum-security con named Monk (Jason Statham). Meanwhile, the governor of the prison gets himself into trouble with "Barry the Bookie," an unlicensed bookie who was recommended to him by Sykes, the resident prison boss, and decides to try to make back the money he owes by betting on the prison guards' team. Doc is killed when Nitro, an unstable inmate and bomb expert, plants a bomb in Meehan's locker at the encouragement of Mr. Ratchett. Nitro is subsequently sent to another facility, but not to the minimum-security hospital he was promised - he is sent to an alternate facility where Ratchett reveals he will be heavily sedated all the time.


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