Cool Hand Luke is a 1967 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, starring Paul Newman and featuring George Kennedy in an Oscar-winning performance. Newman stars in the title role as Luke, a prisoner in a Florida prison camp who refuses to submit to the system. Set in the early 1950s, it is based on Donn Pearce's 1965 novel Cool Hand Luke.
Roger Ebert called Cool Hand Luke an anti-establishment film shot during emerging popular opposition to the Vietnam War. Filming took place within California's San Joaquin River Delta region; the set, imitating a prison farm in the Deep South, was based on photographs and measurements made by a crew the filmmakers sent to a Road Prison in Gainesville, Florida.
Upon its release, Cool Hand Luke received favorable reviews and was a box-office success. It cemented Newman's status as one of the era's top actors, and was called the "touchstone of an era". Newman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, Kennedy won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Pearce and Pierson were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Lalo Schifrin was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score. In 2005, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, considering it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film has a 100% rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, and the prison warden's (Strother Martin) line in the film beginning with "What we've got here is failure to communicate" was listed at number 11 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes list.
Plot
In early 1950s Florida, decorated World War II veteran Lucas "Luke" Jackson drunkenly beheads several parking meters. He is sentenced to two years on a chain gang in a prison camp run by the Captain, a stern warden, and Walking Boss Godfrey, a quiet rifleman nicknamed "the man with no eyes" because he always wears mirrored sunglasses. There, even minor violations are punished by "a night in the box", a small wooden booth in the prison yard with limited air and space.
Luke refuses to observe the established order among the prisoners and quickly runs afoul of their leader, Dragline. When the two have a boxing match, Luke is severely outmatched but refuses to acquiesce. Eventually, Dragline stops the fight, but Luke's tenacity earns the prisoners' respect and draws the guards' attention. He later wins a poker game by bluffing with a hand worth nothing, and Dragline christens him "Cool Hand Luke".
After a visit from his sick mother, Arletta, Luke becomes more optimistic about his situation. He repeatedly shows defiance to the Captain and the guards, and his sense of humor and independence prove inspiring to the other prisoners. Luke's struggle for supremacy peaks when he leads a work crew in a seemingly impossible but successful effort to complete a road-paving job in less than a day. The prisoners start to idolize him after he wins a bet that he can eat 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour.
One evening, Luke receives notice that his mother has died. Anticipating that Luke might attempt to escape to attend the funeral, the Captain has him locked in the box. After being released, Luke becomes determined to escape. Under cover of a Fourth of July celebration, he makes his initial escape attempt. He is recaptured by local police and returned to the chain gang. The Captain has Luke fitted with leg irons and delivers a warning speech to the inmates. Shortly afterward, Luke escapes a second time. While free, Luke mails the prison a magazine that includes a photograph of himself with two beautiful women. He is soon recaptured, beaten, returned to the prison camp, and fitted with two sets of leg irons. The Captain warns Luke that he will be killed if he ever attempts to escape again. Luke becomes annoyed by the other prisoners fawning over the magazine photo and says he faked it. At first, the other prisoners are angry, but when Luke returns after a long stay in the box and is punished by being forced to eat a massive serving of rice, the others help him finish it.