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Review Archive
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    		•

    FILMS

    Cool Hand Luke (1967)
  • Starring Paul Newman, George Kennedy, J.D. Cannon, Lou Antonio, Robert Drivas, Strother Martin

  • Directed by Stuart Rosenberg

    • It's a classic line, so famous that most people know the quote without ever having see the movie. "What we've got here, is failure to communicate," says Strother Martin, playing a weasely prison captain. What the captain fails to realize is that you can't keep a good man down, and no movie illustrates this better than Stuart Rosenberg's 1967 classic.

    Lucas Jackson, deftly played by Paul Newman (bringing to life a role originally intended for Telly Savalas), is a prisoner in a rural chain-gang, where he has been incarcerated for the crime of cutting the heads off of parking meters. His reason for breaking the law? Only that it was a small town and there was nothing else to do in the evening. Cool Hand Luke—so nicknamed for his ability to bluff at cards, claiming that "sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand"—refused to conform to the rules and regulations, thus quickly gaining respect from his comrades-in-chains.

    Whether it's running from the Bosses, spending a night in "the box" or eating 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour (a remarkable and memorable scene that will make you think twice about eating eggs), Luke's spirit won't break.

    George Kennedy won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor playing Luke's prison-buddy, Dragline. And for the crime of "Not Awarding Newman with Best Actor," the academy itself should be shackled and sent out to clean the sides of the highway.

    (Originally published in Satellite Orbit magazine, November 2000.)

    Addendum: You can catch this one on TV almost any weekend. It's usually on one of the Turner stations, but I wouldn't bother with it on television. Commercials and cuts. Ug. Who needs that? Watch it on tape or DVD. It is a classic movie, and Newman does a magnificent job.