Cool Hand Luke (1967) Reviews

• "Luke" is a character Newman was born to play - and this is one hell of a beautiful film

  gogoschka-12013-12-18

  This film got me from the first frame to the last. It's not even because of the story (which I love, of course) - it's just so very well made. And so modern. The kind of angles and perspectives the camera uses, the way it zooms in and out or even allows itself (literally) to get dirty - the way this whole picture was shot is just something I haven't seen in an American film released prior to this one. And yet, although it is considered a classic, when people talk about the "New Hollywood" somehow 'Cool Hand Luke' is hardly ever mentioned - despite the fact that it came out only a couple of months after 'Bonnie and Clyde' in 1967 and before 'The Graduate'. I look at this film mainly as a character study but the story arc also works very well and it hasn't aged a bit. This is one of those rare films that was way ahead of its time and which has simply everything: great acting, iconic characters and scenes, wonderful music - and the cinematography is just unbelievable. Funny, tragic and moving, 'Cool Hand Luke' is one hell of a film. What we've got here is NOT failure to communicate - but a 10 star masterpiece. Favorite films: http://www.IMDb.com/list/mkjOKvqlSBs/ Lesser-known Masterpieces: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls070242495/ Favorite Low-Budget and B-Movies: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls054808375/ Favorite TV-Shows reviewed: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls075552387/

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• Not just a prison film, but an excellent film about not being able to conform in a world that requires it

  clydestuff2004-02-10

  Having had the advantage of reading Donn Pearce's novel about a year before seeing Cool Hand Luke, it was with great anticipation that I awaited it's transfer to the big screen. I was not disappointed. Cool Hand Luke could easily be classified by the misguided as just a prison yarn, but it is so much more than that. It is the story of a man who refuses to be nailed down or conform to the rules and regulations of a society that he has never craved to fit into. When Lucas Jackson is arrested for cutting heads off parking meters, his explanation to the prison captain(Strother Martin) is "Small Town, not much to do in the evening", which would have us believe he was just being drunk and stupid. Later, to one of the other inmates he mutters the same answer, but importantly adds "just settlin some old scores". It is a brief but important point in helping to define the character of Luke beyond just being drunk and damaging public property. As a service man, we also discover that Luke won a bronze star, achieved the rank of sergeant but came out as a private. Again, early evidence that Luke is unable to conform to any body's rules but his own. Yet, we are given clear evidence that Luke knows what is right in principal and what is wrong. At one point in the film when they are putting Luke in the box under less than reasonable circumstances, he tells the boss, "calling it your job don't make it right, Boss." In a visit from his mother Arletta(Jo Van Fleet), Luke says plenty about his own character by telling her, "A man's got to go his own way" or as he also puts it, "I tried to live always free and above board like you but I can't seem to find no elbow room". As Luke enters the prison that will supposedly be his home for the next two years, we meet the other inmates. Some of them wear chains, some of them do not. It is a point early in the film that director Stuart Rosenberg, emphasizes. We understand quickly that sooner or later you conform. You either walk the line the way the bosses tell you to, or they will find the means to get you to walk the line. As the Captain reiterates, "for your own good, you'll learn the rules" A point driven home often. What we discover about their crimes is minuscule. One is jailed for manslaughter after hitting a pedestrian with his car, another is a paper hanger, another new inmate is charged with breaking, entering and assault. The nature of their crimes is unimportant to us. It enables to view these prisoners as men, and while we don't feel any genuine sympathy for them, feeling disgusted by their crimes would have been a distraction from the true purpose of Pearce's story, and Luke as the focal point. Because of his individuality, it doesn't take Luke long before he unexpectedly becomes a hero to the other inmates. It is not a role he chooses, or even wants. It unexpectedly imposes the burden on him of having to live up to the expectations of others. He never truly understands the nature of this hero worship, and would be just as happy if he didn't have to deal with it. He is still trying to find his way in the world, and if there is any real purpose for his existence. Another principal character is Dragline(George Kennedy). It is he who finally establishes the fact that Cool Hand Luke is a man who can not be beaten. Dragline's admiration for Luke seems to extend from the fact that he(Dragline)has learned the rules on how to get by, but yet regrets having lost some of his own individuality in the process. He is the rest of the inmates in microcosm. I can't remember a role that George Kennedy has ever been better in, and he deservedly won the best supporting actor award. Cool Hand Luke is not without it's humorous moments especially in the early going. It is these moments that help move the film from the early stages to the darker more despairing later stages. Perhaps, for that reason alone we are even more effected by Luke's dilemma. In translating his novel to the screen Donn Pearce along with Frank Pierson, has managed to bring the heart and soul of his nove to the big screen. Lalo Shifrin's memorable score emphasizes often the repeated drudgery of working on the chain gang. Director Stuart Rosenberg made more good films after Cool Hand Luke, but in my opinion never achieved the same degree of perfection that he does here. As Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman give one of the most memorable performances in a long distinguished career. It is not an easy task portraying a man who travels the road from being a sincere individualist, to a man who may be beaten and defeated, yet in the end is still unwilling to accept that fate. Although Rod Steiger won the best actor award that year, one could argue that Newman's role was more difficult, as it required substantially different subtle ranges in character. As for the failure of Cool Hand Luke to achieve a Best Picture nomination, I'm at a loss to explain that malfunction, especially when the likes of Doctor Doolittle and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, far lesser efforts than this were nominated. Cool Hand Luke is a true classic in every sense of the word. It is a film that will long be remembered. My grade: A+

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• A classic that became a big part of my life

  prodigalorphan-720992016-04-15

  I first saw "Cool Hand Luke" the first week it came out. Went to see it with my father at a theater on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. We were just a few blocks away from the hospital where my Mom was dying of cancer and we just needed a break. It was cathartic. Feeling as beat up and left for dead as I was at the time, I came across a character who knew how to take the punches. "Luke" is a beautifully crafted film. Not one wasted frame or moment. Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson's screenplay is nothing less than a working man's parable of a truly good soul who just couldn't seem to get a break. In ways, it could be said he truly didn't let himself. But the strength within Luke that would not let him compromise who he was for who he was told to be, the resilience to fight back against those who tried to fight him on that was inspirational. Whether it was a carefully chosen remark or just one of them Luke looks, They knew They couldn't knock him out no matter how badly They knocked him down. Seems he handled life like that, and it was an example I've clung to and have tried to follow in the almost fifty subsequent years. Conrad Hall's cinematography was breathtaking, providing the scope of all the integral parts of the story with the immediacy of all the most intimate moments. Any single frame could hang on your living room wall as the centerpiece. The cast: Dennis Hopper, Strother Martin, Lou Antonio, Ralph Waite ... and George Kennedy. Academy Award Winner George Kennedy. "Dragline". The most unforgettable "gentle giant" I believe I've ever seen on the silver screen. Each and every one of them, in all their glory and in the simplest of nuances, helped raise Paul Newman's masterful portrayal to an ever higher level, maybe his best work ever. The character is very much the story in "Cool Hand Luke" and the ensemble brings it to life. Frustrating, challenging, confusing, pain- in-the-ass life with just enough of that rebellious spirit to bring hope to those facing some of their tougher times. I saw the film four more times that first year, and probably twice each year since whenever I could find it. Check in with Luke and the boys for a breath of fresh air and some world-shaking hope. Can't speak for anyone else, but Luke is right up there with Atticus Finch for me when it comes to celluloid heroes, these are the two whose stories got me through some really, really bleak times. And for me, "Cool Hand Luke" was ultimately a story of hope. The story of a man who never gave in. Never gave up. And never stopped grinning. All that they piled on him, all they tried to bury him under ... just wasn't worth his getting worked up over. Wasn't gonna get to his spirit.

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• The anti-hero

  XRANDY2002-01-02

  One of the reasons that the late 60s/early 70s was such a powerful era in filmmaking is the emergence of the anti-hero (defined as an individual with heroic qualities, but not in a position we would usually find a hero). This is symbolized greatly in `Cool Hand Luke'. We can identify with Luke because his crime is venial and his concerns over the great questions of life are ours. It is because of this and his persuasive charm that the other prisoners (played remarkably well by Kennedy and a host of others to include Wayne Rogers, Ralph Waite, Dennis Hopper and one of the actors who played a crewmember on `Alien') live vicariously through him. Filled with memorable scenes (the boxing match, 50 eggs, the fealty of his fellow prisoners who help him finish his food after his stomach is shrunk in solitary confinement, `shakin' it here boss', the sneezing dogs, and of course the carwash part) and outstanding character development (created by what is said and what is not said, i.e. the visiting brother), one of screen history's most repeated lines and the great acting of Newman, this movie deserves to be called a classic. Released the same year as `Bonnie and Clyde', it makes one long for the days when you needed a real script to make a movie.

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• Very well-made with sense of graphic imagery and cinema view...

  Nazi_Fighter_David2001-01-07

  The rebel character in Hollywood after the death of James Dean went through a period of transition and did not gain definite new characteristics until the late sixties... The three established rebel/anti-heroes in movies were Paul Newman, Warren Beatty, and Steve McQueen... In 1967, screen audiences were exposed to two new rebel hero characters, Clyde Barrow, a rebel without a cause with enough guts to strike out against any bank, and Luke Jackson, an anti-hero 'born to lose,' but a man full of pride and dignity... "Cool Hand Luke" resumes Newman's career as another rebel, a non-conformist, a perfect hero who beats the system wherever... Superbly directed by Stuart Rosenberg, Newman exhibits a complete arrangement of emotions invading every nuance and implication... Resources of his true command of his technical acting are breathtaking in their impact... The motion picture (nominated for 4 Academy Awards) won him his 4th Academy Award nomination... Newman is again a cynical loner, but he's also charming, and everything is calculated to involve us with him; like "Hombre," the film begins and ends with closeups of his face, but here, appropriately, he has an engaging smile… The opening, where he drinks beer, unscrews tops from parking meters and mumbles to the arriving cop, recalls Dean's drunken incoherence at the start of "Rebel Without a Cause"—an apt title for Luke… He breaks rules for no apparent reason, wherever he is, including the chain gang to which he's sentenced… Unlike Paul Muni in "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang," who steals only to eat and is turned by society into a hardened criminal, Luke is a criminal from the start, and his crime isn't motivated by hunger… It's a meaningless anti-authority gesture—the existentialist "gratuitous act," committed purely for the sake of committing it… Luke engages our sympathy not because he is economically deprived or the product of an unhappy home, but because for him the act of rebellion is its own justification: he's the perfect sixties hero… Initially, Luke alienates the prisoners by his indifference and sarcasm, and the top dog, Dragline (George Kennedy) picks a fight with him… Luke is severely beaten but keeps fighting, and this—plus his continual defiance of the guards—wins him the men's respect… Their admiration grows when he proves he can eat 50 hard-boiled eggs, one after the other, in only one hour, another gratuitous act ("somethin' to do"). But Luke gradually becomes a victim of the excessive admiration, rebelling because they expect him to, which leads to a pattern of escapes and captures… As the warden says, "What we got here is a failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach." Even though Luke becomes subservient after torture, he again escapes… Dragline admires the way he fooled the guards while planning all along to escape… But Luke says he really did break down, and asserts: "l never planned anything in my life." Even his last act is motivated not by heroism but by impulse… The physical punishment Newman's characters often undergo reaches an extreme here, as Luke constantly invites pain (in his fight with Dragline, he says, "You're gonna have to kill me."). Underlying his sometimes vigorous rebelliousness is despair at a cruelly indifferent world… But the men need a hero, and Dragline perpetuates the myth, telling them that he had "that Luke smile" to the very end… We last see a montage of shots of Luke smiling—the men's vision of him as unbeaten and almost immortal… Newman's performance is among his best, and Luke is one of his definitive studies of non conformism… As in "Hombre," he underplays, but in a loose, relaxed, "cool" manner… He's affecting in a wide range of moods: quiet detachment, wry contempt, raw courage, exhaustion, exuberance, gentleness, anger, resignation… There's a superb1y understated scene in which Luke's dying mother (Jo Van Fleet) visits him… Like Rocky Graziano, he says he tried to live cleanly, but could never find a way… But the mood is quite different here: instead of intense emotion, there are on1y ingenious expressions of uneasiness, regret, sadness, acceptance… Newman conveys his unspoken affection entirely through his glances and reactions, as she wistfully remarks that she once had high hopes for him… The actor even survives the film's pretentious attempts to make him a mock-Christ figure… Besides the obvious sacrifice-resurrection parallel, he's even shown in the exact crucifixion position following his fifty-egg (Last Supper?) ordeal… There are two badly conceived dialogs with a God he doesn't believe in—after which he realizes, "l gotta find my own way," a rather unconcealed statement of existential despair—but Newman performs them with quiet conviction…. His mock religion is better suggested by the bottle opener he wears in lieu of a religious medal… And the despair is effectively dramatized in his reaction to his mother's death… The men leave him by himself, and he sits on his bed, playing the banjo… With a sad, breaking voice, he sings a religious parody: "l don't care if it rains or freezes, long as 1 got my plastic Jesus…" He looks down and begins crying, but sings faster, obsessively, withdrawing into himself and expressing his utter loneliness in a world that has no God… It's one of the most moving scenes in all of Newman's work… Paralleled to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Cool Hand Luke" is a character study, which works beautifully, very well-made with sense of graphic imagery and cinema view, a good-looking film with superb photography in Color, extremely good as an entertainment...

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