Cool Hand Luke

MPAA Rating

Theatrical Release Date

Oct 31, 1967

Genre(s)

Richard Donner
Classics
Prison Films
Action & Adventure
Drama

Rating (Stars)

Description

Paul Newman gives one of the defining performances of his career, and cemented his place as a beautiful-rebel screen icon playing the stubbornly tough and independent title character in Cool Hand Luke. And before he became familiar as a sidekick in 1970s disaster movies (Earthquake and the Airport movies), George Kennedy won an Oscar for playing Dragline, the brutal chain-gang boss who tries to beat loner Luke's cool out of him. It's a classic rebel-against-the-repressive-institution story in the line of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest or The Shawshank Redemption. Certain moments have become classics--particularly the hardboiled egg-eating contest, and the immortal line (drooled by Strother Martin, as a sadistic redneck prison officer), "What we have here is a failure to communicate." And don't forget, Luke is also the source of the oft-quoted driving ditty, "I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I have my plastic Jesus, right here on the dashboard of my car..." He is cool, all right. The digital video disc is in anamorphic widescreen and digital stereo. --Jim Emerson

Director

Stuart Rosenberg

Stars

Paul Newman
George Kennedy
J.D. Cannon
Lou Antonio
Robert Drivas

Running Time

127 minutes

Original Price

$12.98

Current Value

$4.39

DVD Features

Anamorphic
Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
Full Screen
Widescreen
NTSC
2.35:1