Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the famous "failure to communicate" scene from Cool Hand Luke.
DVD Review
Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman, George Kennedy, Strother Martin, 1967I hope, even when we have a much more equitable society than we do now, we still have “free spirits” like Cool Hand Luke (played, and played well with just enough 1960s sneer and ‘devil take the hinter post’ bravado by the late Paul Newman). No, not the hard- scrabble, mad mother-loved, growing up kid part, not the wise, too wise, before his age part that made him cynical, not the world-weary and world- wary before his time part but the crafty, fidgety, authority can go to hell part. That is a trait, as this film makes abundantly clear, no well-valued in current bourgeois society interested as it in the well-oiled machine, and a sullen by-the-numbers mass of humanity.
Of course, as the story line here unfolds, “free spirit”-types take more than their share of beatings in life, and no where is that more true than in a prison. And given old Luke’s brand of free spirit (and edginess) he was bound to wind up in prison, sooner or later, no matter how “street smart” he was, or brave in military service. However, nothing in his resume would make one think that even in prison, a notorious Southern work camp prison to boot, that old Luke would knuckle under. Something has to give. Throw in a sadistic warden (played by Strother Martin of the famous line used in the headline to this entry), some love/hate camaraderie with fellow inmates, especially “big lug” Oscar-winner George Kennedy and you have a volatile mix. Old Luke will keep running that rock up the mountain but you know in your bones, deep in your bones, that rock is coming back down one more time than it is going up. And right over him. Yet Luke still keeps doing it. Here’s one tip of the hat for the “free spirits” though.
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