Review of Cool Hand Luke (1967) by Ben L — 07 Mar 2016

Literally the only thing I knew about this movie was the one famous line, so it was interesting to see what the film was actually about. Cool Hand Luke is the story of a man who is sent to a rural prison and decides that he will not let that life break him. Paul Newman is great as Luke, his charm is so evident that you can see why he wins over all the people around him, and it makes the last act of the film that much more surprising. All the prisoners are interesting characters, but many of them kind of fade into the crowd and I wasn't able to differentiate specific personality traits that set them apart. But the one guy who stood out was the late-great George Kennedy. He is the perfect actor for that role, and his fight with Luke is a great scene which causes a logical shift in his performance. Perhaps the most engaging part of this film is the arc we see the prison guards go through. Early on I saw them as very reasonable people, but as the film progresses you sympathize much more with the prisoners and start to see the oppression of their captors. All around I think Cool Hand Luke is an excellent film, but it is tough to take the bleakness at times. There's one particular scene that is heartbreaking which almost brought me to tears. But to be honest, the biggest difficulty I had with the movie was the ending, so SPOILER ALERT:

In many ways this film felt like the anti-Shawshank Redemption. Part of the joy of watching that film is that it puts Andy in a similarly depressing situation but he finds his happy ending. In Cool Hand Luke the ending is so sad that I just can't imagine myself wanting to revisit the film. It's well-made but I can't rate it as highly because there's another movie which is so similar that I like more, even though this one came out first.