Cool Hand Luke

This Paul Newman movie in 1967 is one of his most iconic. Playing a man put in jail, on a hard labor chain gang, for vandalizing parking meters Newman's Lucas Jackson is a born loser.

As he arrives at the prison it is revealed that he was a decorated war hero from the Korean War but that he was a private when discharged. Clearly Luke has a problem with authority.

Arriving at the prison Luke soon runs afoul of the de facto prison leader known as Dragline. He is played by George Kennedy who actually won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. An award very well deserved. Kennedy as the big, burly, sweaty, illiterate, leader who eventually comes to see Luke as the best of everything. Actually Dragline's being illiterate is never spelled out, one observes it by whenever any mail comes he asks someone to tell him what them words say. This is an excellent choice to let us learn his illiteracy by observation much as his fellow prisoners might.

A boxing match to settle their differences is arranged and Luke is destroyed by the much larger Dragline. He earns Dragline's respect, however, by refusing to stay dowm, in fact he keeps getting up so long that eventually Dragline walks away and will hit him no more.

A pivotal scene in the movie occurs when Luke's Mother comes to visit him. Dieing, laid out on a bed in the back of a truck, yet still smoking she talks to Luke about how he was always her favorite and wonders what will become of him.

When she dies the Prison Warden worries Luke will try to escape so puts him in the box, which is a dark, small, one person wooden shack for isolation.

Emerging from the cell Luke is changed. Escape is his only motivation and he becomes bigger than life for some of his fellow prisoners when he does so.

There are many legendary scenes in this movie. The egg scene, the Warden's diatribe about Luke upon his return from his first escape " What we've got here is failure to communicate " is perhaps more famous than the movie. As the intro to the song " Civil War" by Guns and Roses it is famous for a whole generation of people who might not have seen the movie.

Perhaps however most affecting is when Dragline returned from his escape attempt with Luke talks about how Luke was flashing that Luke smile the last time he saw him. This is as a collage of pictures of Luke smiling throughout the movie.

A prison gang movie is a rare place to find a character you like, one could argue how anyone with an honorable war record could be placed on a chain gang for a drunken night of mischief, but of course it is a movie after all.

Newman, if possible, is an underrated actor. This is one of the movie's that make that true.