A Failure To, Ah, Communicate-Paul Newman’s “Cool-Hand Luke” (1968) A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell 

Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman, George Kennedy,

If you want a prime example of 1950s-1960s manliness look no further than the film under review, Cool Hand Luke, to one of the that era’s great male actors Paul Newman who epitomize the “new man” of the post-World War II screen. Gone was the old macho push the edges until it hurt and then double down of the likes of Humphrey Bogart in the Raymond Chandler-Dashiell private detective classics and Robert Mitchum in something like Out Of The Past who took their beating and didn’t cry afterward. But also, did not show the more vulnerable side either. Handsome, almost pretty boy handsome with those piercing blue eyes Newman could take a punch, or as in this film, many punches and come up standing but also shown a side that expressed some doubts about his fate, about how his hurts were not so far from the surface. So not the James Dean sense of serious alienation but a more adult understanding that living in the modern world was a tough dollar even for tough guys. Robert Redford, his pal, later in the decade would exhibit a lot of the same traits and cement that “new man” image for that generation.           

Here’s the play, the rather simple play when you think about it, here. Luke, war be-medaled Luke, had not shaken off that experience, had been drifting along trying to “get by” without thinking too much about his place in the sun, or if he had a place. One drunken night, just for the hell of it, no reason, he went on a spree, a spree of decapitating his city’s parking meters. He got caught as one would expect and was sent to the county farm, the county workhouse for his efforts. Now this was the South that our boy Luke got himself sent away for and so he was in for some hard labor on old Parchman’s farm to express a generic term for what he was up against. He didn’t fit in for a while, also as expected from a loner, a guy who was just drifting along. That did not sit well with Dragline, played by Academy Award winner for his performance George Kennedy, head prisoner “elected” by being the toughest guy out on the prison farm. Even Luke after taking a manly beating where he would exhibit that never give up attitude from Dragline admitted he was beaten even if he could not quit.    

But the rules and regulation of prison life, even the rule and regulations that the prisoners imposed on themselves, did not sit well with Luke and before long he was headed for his new career of episodes of solitary, of the “box” which would break a man after a while. Led to his escapes and captures which the others admired if they could not follow. Led to him being broken inside anyway. Led to Dragline joining him for a minute in his bouts of freedom-seeking. In the end he was hurt but not bowed. Never. Even that fateful last escape where he was mortally wounded. Yeah, that Luke was a piece of work and the guys down on Parchman’s lived for a while on the memory of that “world-shaker.” Kudos Paul Newman on a great performance. You too George Kennedy.