The Yards (2000) on Netflix
Out of prison, Leo Handler returns to Queens, where his aunt is married to contractor Frank Olchin. His friend Willie Gutierrez runs sabotage crews in the rail yards, and Leo needs work.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.4/1025,160 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes64%
Trailer
Plot summary
At his mother Val's house in Queens, a surprise party marks Leo Handler's parole, and there he meets Willie Gutierrez, the boyfriend of his cousin Erica. Willie thanks Leo for having served time for their gang of friends and suggests he ask Erica's stepfather, Frank Olchin, for work. Frank runs the Electric Rail Corporation, which repairs subway cars under city contracts, and offers to finance a machinist program for Leo but will not hire him. Willie shows Leo how the contract system works, bribing the official who awards the business, then takes him along when his crew sabotages a rival firm's work at the Sunnyside yards.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Yards (2000)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- James Gray, who directed and co-wrote The Yards, based it on an actual corruption scandal from the mid-1980s. The real case involved Gray's own father, though the article gives no further detail on his role in it.
- The New York City Transit Authority, known as the MTA, at first refused to let the production companies film at any of its rail yards, because it felt the film portrayed the agency negatively. The railyard scenes ended up being shot at the MTA's 207th Street Yard in Inwood, Manhattan, plus an abandoned freight yard in Brooklyn.
