X
- 1967
- Approved
- Warner Bros./Seven Arts
- 2 h 7 m
- 1967
- Approved
- Warner Bros./Seven Arts
- 2 h 7 m
Summary When Luke Jackson (Paul Newman) is arrested for drunkenly vandalizing parking meters, he is sentenced to serve time on a prison chain gang. Although the warden, guards and prisoners all try to break Luke's spirit upon his arrival, it soon becomes clear that Luke is not about to play by anyone else's rules. He eventually earns the respect...
Directed By: Stuart Rosenberg
Written By: Donn Pearce, Frank Pierson, Hal Dresner
- 1967
- Approved
- Warner Bros./Seven Arts
- 2 h 7 m
- 1967
- Approved
- Warner Bros./Seven Arts
- 2 h 7 m
Cool Hand Luke
8.4
Where to Watch
Summary When Luke Jackson (Paul Newman) is arrested for drunkenly vandalizing parking meters, he is sentenced to serve time on a prison chain gang. Although the warden, guards and prisoners all try to break Luke's spirit upon his arrival, it soon becomes clear that Luke is not about to play by anyone else's rules. He eventually earns the respect...
Directed By: Stuart Rosenberg
Written By: Donn Pearce, Frank Pierson, Hal Dresner
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
92
100% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
92
100% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
The incessant, rhythmic swishing of the chain gang’s scythes burrows into your brain – and then adds Newman’s supernova performance. It’s a gulag melodrama, if such a thing is possible.
Mr. Newman is excellent, at the top of his sometime erratic form, in the role of this warped and alienated loner whose destiny it is to lose. George Kennedy is powerfully obsessive as the top-dog who handles things his way as effectively and finally as destructively as does the warden or the guards.
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 74 User Ratings
8.4
91% Positive
67 Ratings
67 Ratings
7% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
3% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 74 User Ratings
8.4
91% Positive
67 Ratings
67 Ratings
7% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
3% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
Cool Hand Luke is a 1967 drama film, I guess crime is another genre you could stick it under... I think they are stuck inside a prison but not sure but anyway, Cool Hand Luke stars Paul Newman and George Kennedy... Cool Hand Luke is a film I grew up with as a child so I'm very familiar with the film and I surely remember it well. The acting is excellent especially from Paul Newman and all the actors are great in the film and it's full of excellent characters even the people who are dislikeable. The carwash scene is genius but the ending is a bit sad but didn't ruin the film. Only negative I have about Cool Hand Luke is we didn't know if Luke (Paul Newman) lived or died at the end of the movie after he got shot because it didn't show us so that was a shocker but besides that this film is perfect. A classic in all departments.
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All-time favorite movie! Newman is a national treasure, full of humor in this inspirational epic!
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Luke is the first Newman character to understand himself well enough to tell us to shove off. He's through risking his neck to make us happy. With this film, Newman completes a cycle of five films over six years, and together they have something to say about the current status of heroism. But Cool Hand Luke does draw together threads from the earlier movies, especially Hombre, and it is a tough, honest film with backbone.
Newman gives an excellent performance, assisted by a terrific supporting cast, including George Kennedy, outstanding as the unofficial leader of the cons who yields first place to Newman.
Cool Hand Luke is a metaphor for the social climate in which it germinated. Luke represents that segment of the population who will not submit, no matter how viciously they are beaten. They repeatedly rise up, convinced not only of the rightness of their actions, but that, in the end, they can make a difference. In the midst of the burgeoning '60s cultural revolution, it's impossible to ignore.
Paul Newman tells 'em where to get off in this slick, popular antiestablishment drama set in a prison camp. Stuart Rosenberg's direction is a horror, but the cast teems with so many familiar faces that this film can't help but entertain.
Newman remains watchable and glamorous throughout, bloody, muddy or coated in torso-flattering sweat, but the film’s efforts to sentimentally humanize him by psychological revelation are clumsy.
This film got me from the first frame to the last. It's not even because of the story (which I love, of course) - it's just so very well made. And so modern. The kind of angles and perspectives the camera uses, the way it zooms in and out or even allows itself (literally) to get dirty - the way this whole picture was shot is just something I haven't seen in an American film released prior to this one.
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I love old movies and saw the great reviews of this one and I love Newman so i gave it a shot. Acting was perfect, well done...cinematography was **** the story draaaaaaged..I kept thinking ok something exciting will happen......nada......waited some more and found that movie ended. Lacked excitement for me that’s all. I love Newman and will watch his other older movies.
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It’s often amazing how little it takes for a film to be taken as an Award winner. This is now looked upon as a good example of the grueling Chain Gang genre. It seems maybe ‘they’ have not seen “I‘am A Fugitive from a Chain Gang”, “Sullivan’s Travels, or “Strange Cargo”. In this illustration the convicts have plenty of food to eat, get to have plenty of sleep, clean clothes, and even have time for silly food eating competitions like; betting who can eat 50 hard boiled eggs!. Apart from some hard road work it’s more like a naughty boys club.
Luke is somehow seen to be a Christ-like character, even though he is little more than a drunken bum who endlessly blasphemes and vandalizes parking meters. These writers clearly know little about Christ. Try Richard Sale’s ‘Strange Cargo’ for a convincing Christ like chain gang character - this limp script seems to have ‘borrowed’ from Sales example – and not at all very well. The sequence with the floozy washing a car is so cheesy in its contrived construction that it's little more than borderline el-cheapo R stuff to pad out the run time.
Conrad Hall's Technicolor cinematography, and a curious cast of support players, offer more interest than the script. Also not sure Stuart Rosenberg was quite the right director for this one. Lalo Schifrin’s score is highly reminiscent of another Newman effort just a few years earlier by Elmer Bernstein for “Hud”. ‘Luke’ ambles on for over two Hrs towards a disappointing resolution, ending up rather forgettable but seems to have pleased someone!
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Awards
Academy Awards, USA
• 1 Win & 4 Nominations
Golden Globes, USA
• 2 Nominations
Laurel Awards
• 1 Win & 3 Nominations
