Luke (Paul Newman) is a Southern hardcase who doesn’t want to conform. After a drunken bout of idleness and lunacy does a bit of change-clinking madness, he’s sentenced to chain gang and lorded over by a tough as nails Captain (Strother Martin) who feels it his duty to bend the prisoner into the norm. But this man doesn’t break for no one, and failures to communicate or no he’s going to live his life exactly how he wants consequences, no matter how potentially tragic, be damned.

CRITIQUE

It only seems appropriate that I’m only finally getting around to writing this review of the 1967 classic Cool Hand Luke now. Ever since the announcement of Newman’s death a couple of weeks ago I’ve been struggling as what I should say about the man, what words could even remotely encapsulate a career as dynamic and inspirational as his was.

After reading so many other profiles and remembrances I’ve come to the conclusion they’re just aren’t any. Language just doesn’t suffice, doesn’t do the man justice, and no matter how many ways a person tries to say it the only honest thing to do here is just let Newman’s body of work – both on and off the silver screen – speak for itself.

With all that in mind (and with thoughts of A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Verdict, Somebody Up There Likes Me, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Nobody’s Fool, Cars, The Hustler, Slap Shot, Harper, The Sting, The Long Hot Summer, The Color of Money, Torn Curtain, Hud and Rachel, Rachel – amongst others – dancing within our heads), let me try and stick to the picture at hand.

And what, exactly, does Cool Hand Luke offer? It has George Kennedy in an Oscar-winning performance that virtually defined his career. It had Martin, a virtually unknown character actor crafting one of the purest cinematic depictions of clueless villainy that’s almost unsurpassed. Long before, “Go ahead, make my day,” or, “I’ll be back,” it offered up a signature line of dialogue quoted so often and by so many people you’d be forgiven for thinking it was written by Shakespeare. It showcases director Stuart Rosenberg (who would also make Pocket Money and The Drowning Pool with his blue-eyed superstar) at the height of his powers, displaying technique and control behind the camera the likes of which he would – sadly – never be able to duplicate again.

Most of all it has Newman. The man played every kind of angry young man or antihero you can imagine, but like Hud Bannon or Eddie Felson or Brick Pollitt before him Luke is a man virtually impossible to dislike even when he’s going out of his way to try and make you do so. In ways only this particular actor could, Newman finds nuances and levels to the prisoner that go beyond the norm, far past what a viewer could ever anticipate, the clichés dripping away into insignificant nothingness as the three-dimensional vitality of the character himself takes the spotlight and refuses to let it go.

This is a great film. A classic. One of those pieces of celluloid drama that transcends the screen to become something sensational and stirring to the point where it completely takes on a life of its own.

Most of all, though, it is going to have to be my final eulogy on an actor who meant so much to the world of film I just don’t have the words in my vocabulary to describe it properly. All I do know is that it was movies like Cool Hand Luke that set me on my own career path, and it was actors like Newman who made – make – it a pleasure and joy to work each and every day of my life. Other than that, I don’t have anything else to say.

THE VIDEO

Cool Hand Luke is presented in 1.85:1 Widescreen. This is a far superior transfer than the original DVD release, Warner Bros. finally giving this timeless classic from their vaults the respect it ultimately deserves.

THE AUDIO

Available audio tracks include English Dolby 5.1 Surround, English Mono and French Mono with optional English and French subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

There aren’t a lot of extras here, the new digitally restored transfer the only real bonus that means a whole heck of a lot. That said, there’s a fairly decent audio commentary from Newman biographer Eric Lax that’s a lot less dry and professorial than I had originally expected, while the new documentary A Natural-Born World-Shaker: Making Cool Hand Luke is both informative and entertaining. There is also the original theatrical trailer.

FINAL THOUGHTS

For Newman lovers, Cool Hand Luke is up there with Hud, The Hustler, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Sting and The Verdict as an absolute must to own. For everyone else, it is essential viewing of the first degree. Either way, it is a movie to pick up now and treasure, just like the man whose memory we’re going to be celebrating for generation upon generation to come.