Other Titles • Cool Hand Luke • Der Unbeugsame (1967)
Synopses for Cool Hand Luke (1967)
1.
His crime: nonconformity. His sentence: the chain gang. Paul Newman plays one of his best-loved roles as Cool Hand Luke, the loner who won't--or can't--comform to the arbitrary rules of his captivity.
2.
Paul Newman gives one of the defining performances of his career, and cemented his place as a beautiful-rebel screen icon playing the stubbornly tough and independent title character in Cool Hand Luke. And before he became familiar as a sidekick in 1970s disaster movies (Earthquake and the Airport movies), George Kennedy won an Oscar for playing Dragline, the brutal chain-gang boss who tries to beat loner Luke's cool out of him. It's a classic rebel-against-the-repressive-institution story in the line of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest or The Shawshank Redemption. Certain moments have become classics--particularly the hardboiled egg-eating contest, and the immortal line (drooled by Strother Martin, as a sadistic redneck prison officer), "What we have here is a failure to communicate." And don't forget, Luke is also the source of the oft-quoted driving ditty, "I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I have my plastic Jesus, right here on the dashboard of my car..." He is cool, all right. The digital video disc is in anamorphic widescreen and digital stereo. --Jim Emerson
3.
In this classic southern prison drama, social misfit Lucas "Luke" Jackson (Paul Newman) is incarcerated for a petty crime and sentenced to a chain gang. Luke is a sullen and laconic young man whose cool defiance of the sadistic warden and bullying inmates earns him the title "Cool Hand Luke." But as the prisoners' respect for Luke grows into hero worship, he finds that he must risk everything in order to live up to their expectations.
Filled with dozens of memorable scenes (Luke eating 50 eggs) and quotable lines ("What we have here is a failure to communicate."), COOL HAND LUKE is a testament to excellent screenwriting (Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson) and Newman's charm and skill as an actor. The film also features an outstanding supporting cast that includes George Kennedy, Strother Martin, and early screen appearances by Dennis Hopper and Harry Dean Stanton.
4.
His crime: nonconformity. His sentence: the chain gang. Paul Newman plays one of his best-loved roles as Cool Hand Luke, the loner who won't - or can't - conform to the arbitrary performances: Luke is The Hustler without a dreamy of victory, Harper without a moral mission, Hud without a father to defy. "Give an actor a good script and he'll move the world," Newman said when pronouncing Cool Hand Luke one of the best scripts he'd read in years. "Luke is detached indifferent, but he can't beat the system he scoffs at. "There's good reason for the script's authenticity: co-author Donn Pearce spent two years of his own life on a chain gang.
A cast of fine character actors, including George Kennedy in his Academy Award winning role of Dragline, gives Newman solid support as fellow prisoners. And Strother Martin is the Captain who taunts Luke with the famous line, "What we've got here is...failure to communicate." No failure here. With rich humor and vibrant storytelling power, Cool Hand Luke succeeds resoundingly
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