Cool Hand Luke is one of those films that’s ingrained itself into the public consciousness to the point where, while not really being able to tell you what its about, most could tell you at least something about it. For example, I knew long before renting it that Paul Newman would eat 50 hard boiled eggs and someone would utter the line “What we got here…is a failure to communicate.”
As much as I knew, the movie might as well had the two taking place in the same scene, someone holding a gun to Newman’s own---forcing eggs down his stomach: “Your hand ain’t so cool now, is it Luke?” Newman doing his best Mr. Belding impression: “Hey, hey, hey…what we got here is a failure to communicate!”
Thankfully, the actual movie is A LOT better than the one in my head. (I’ll try and keep those head-movies to myself from here on out.)
So it goes with classic films, we can know so much about them while not having a single clue to the context. In some cases this can hurt the film when one eventually gets around to seeing it (Gone With The Wind will always be that experience for me), but thankfully Luke has a lot more to offer than a handful of memorable lines and gastrointestinal suspense.
*MINOR SPOILERS
Based on the novel by co-screenwriter Donn Pearce, Cool Hand Luke follows Paul Newman’s Lucas Jackson as he rebels against authority and his peers in a Floridan hard labor prison.
After being driven to behead municipal parking meters by boredom, Paul Newman’s Lucas is sent to a Floridian hard labor prison. Persecuted, at first, by "gang leader" Dragline (George Kennedy in an Academy Award winning role), the rebellious traits that make his a target later lead to Dragline befriending Luke and Luke becoming a hero to the other inmates.
Attaining idolatry by provoking the men into taking some joy in their hard labor and allowing the camp to wager on whether or not he can eat the aforementioned eggs,
Luke never truly embraces the way he is deified in the eyes of his fellow inmates, and actually begins to resent it. Luke is one of the great tragic characters of film history, he found himself in prison because he just couldn't bear the monotony of normal society and he certainly can't conform to the demands of imprisonment. Like most characters that dare to be different, Luke has to suffer for it.
The films two central strengths are Newman---who grabs the eye for every frame he's on screen with his nuanced, subtle performance--- and cinematographer Conrad Hall. Dusty Florida roads and poorly lit prisoner barracks come to life through Hall's camera—the reflection of the prisoners from the Boss's reflective sunglasses is a signature shot of the movie and has been emulated dozens of times since the film's release.
The one minor complaint I can come up with the film is that some of the subtext that compares Luke to a certain historical character seesaws from delicate (Luke's prison number, the way his friends behave around him in the third act) to hammer-to-the-head obvious (the way a photograph is ripped, the final shot, a rather familiar pose Luke strikes after eating the eggs). In many ways these allusions strengthen the film, but in a couple cases I couldn't help but wish they were just a little less overt.
Cool Hand Luke is an easy recommendation for fans of similar-themed anti-establishment imprisonment films The Shawshank Redemption, The Great Escape, or One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest. If a classic is defined by how well it holds up over time, Luke more than qualifies- a film whose story and characters are as unique now as they were forty years ago.
9/10
