Cool Hand Luke

When we heard of Paul Newman’s passing, Cool Hand Luke moved to the top of my (very tall) stack of DVDs to watch and review. One of the defining films of his career, CHL summed up in perfect fashion, the reason Newman was a major box office draw for most of his career. He played characters that were flawed, rebellious and sometimes even despicable, yet it was impossible not to like them, despite their bad behaviors. Here, he’s a former war hero and underachiever who winds up on a chain gang as punishment for cutting the heads off parking meters during a night of serious drinking. A born rebel, Luke soon wins the admiration of his fellow convicts for standing up to the bully of the group (George Kennedy) and to the prison guards who try unsuccessfully to break him. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Luke bets that he can eat 50 eggs in an hour and watching him do so, is both amusing and cringe-inducing, but throughout, Newman never loses that magical twinkle in his bright blue eyes that charmed the ladies and made the guys want to be his best buddy. The film was also known for the notorious line, “what we have here, is failure to communicate,” as well as Lalo Schiffrin’s score, part of which became famous as the theme music to Eyewitness News. Hailed as one of his generations greatest actors and later as a humanitarian for his devotion to charitable causes, Paul Newman will be missed, but his legacy will live on, thanks to meticulous restorations of films such as this one that keep him alive in our memories for decades to come. 

Posted in DVD Reviews, Reviews