"Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand."
Cool Hand Luke is a 1967 drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Paul Newman, based on the 1965 novel of the same name by Donn Pearce.
It tells the story of one Lucas "Luke" Jackson (Newman) during his stay at a Florida prison camp sometime in the late 1940s or early '50s, and how he stands up to the system within the camp.
George Kennedy won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Dragline, the head prisoner who befriends Luke.
Lalo Schifrin's music score is well known for its "Tar Sequence" piece, which would go on to be used as theme music for news programs on various ABC owned stations. Australia's Nine Network news program, Nine News Australia, still uses it to this day.
Listin' the tropes here, Boss:
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Luke's in jail because he got drunk and decided to decapitate some parking meters. When asked what he was thinking, Luke admits that he wasn't thinking much at all.
- All Crimes Are Equal: Virtually all infractions in the prison have the same punishment: get sent to the box. Even when the guards simply want to prevent Luke from running in the immediate aftermath of his mother's death, there's only one thing to do with him: put him in the box. This injustice is what sparks Luke's desire to escape.
- Arch-Enemy: Luke is in a battle of wills with the Captain, and by extension, the Captain's Walking Boss.
- Balloon Belly: As Luke is attempting to eat fifty hard-boiled eggs, his belly balloons up. One prisoner taps on it, produces a sound like a drum, causing the prisoner to guess that he has no more room left.
- The Bet: Dragline bets that Luke can eat anything. Luke boasts that he can eat fifty hard-boiled eggs in one hour. The rest of the prison bets against them, pitting the entire prison's currency against itself on a single bet.
- Big Bad: The Captain, who is the avatar of authoritarianism.
- Bittersweet Ending: Luke dies and the camp goes back to normal, but the camp director has been one-upped and his bodyguard is similarly broken. Luke's death also appears to have transformed him into a heroic martyr figure for Dragline and the rest of the inmates.
- Bully Turned Buddy: The relationship between Luke and boss prisoner Dragline starts acrimoniously, prompting them into a boxing match to settle their grudge. Although he loses the fight, Luke impresses Dragline with his resilience, and the pair become fast friends.
- Cardboard Prison: Luke is able to escape prison regularly (though he's usually brought back quickly). Finally, the sheriff has enough and shoots him.
- Cool Shades: The evil prison warder wears a pair of impenetrable mirror shades, causing the men to call him "the man with no eyes."
- Creator Cameo: Donn Pearce, who wrote the original novel, appears as the convict Sailor.
- Crucified Hero Shot: After the infamous Fifty Eggs contest... strangely enough. There's also the way Luke's photo of him with two ladies is torn, and is slammed in your face at the end. Juxtaposed over a shot of two roads intersecting like a cross, just to drive the point home.
- Darkest Hour: Luke comes back on his own after he runs away the second time after he grows tired of getting abused by people who threaten to call the police on him. The camp's punishment apparently breaks him, and no one thinks of Luke as a hero anymore... until he runs away the third time by pretending to be brainwashed and dutifully fetch some water from the truck. Dragline assumes he was faking the whole time, but Luke claims he actually had been broken, and this last escape was purely on the spur of the moment.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Luke and Dragline start off as rivals and eventually find themselves in a boxing match. While Luke is severely overmatched, the fight is called off before there is a proper winner because Luke refuses to give up and Dragline loses the heart to continue beating him. Luke earns the camp's respect, and Dragline befriends Luke.
- Defiant to the End:
- Luke refuses to surrender and return to imprisonment even though it would spare his life, complete with Ironic Echo ("What we've got here is a failure to communicate").
- Luke notes that a snapping turtle is still biting onto his stick even after it's died. That should sound a little familiar.
- Delusions of Eloquence: Strother Martin said that his conception of the Captain as a character was that he was extremely dim-witted and picked up phrases like "failure to communicate" from religious pamphlets, then spouted them over-and-over because he thought they made him sound intelligent.
- Determinator: Luke's spirit can't be broken, even if he's been badly trounced in a fight he doesn't give up, and he's constantly scheming ways to escape.
- Ends with a Smile: The last moments are of the photograph of the smiling Luke with the two women. The final shot zooms in on Luke's smile to suggest that, although he has been killed, the cruelties of prison life weren't enough to destroy his spirit. It can be seen here.
- Establishing Character Moment: When the Captain reads Luke's file, he notes that Luke was a war hero who nevertheless exited the military having never risen his rank above private, suggesting both Luke's great capacity for heroism as well as his self-destructive stubbornness.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Captain insists that everyone refer to him as Captain.
- Fanservice: Paul Newman and a bunch of other men working, frequently shirtless? Also, Lucille, both in-universe and out-of-universe.
- Fanservice Car Wash: One of the more famous scenes the film has the prisoners watching a blonde bombshell wash her car. Luke asserts that she's deliberately teasing the men.
- Fatal Flaw: Luke's uncontrollable, rebellious nature ends up resulting in his death.
- Faux Affably Evil: The Captain orders brutality upon his prison's inmates while talking about how dare they push him into having to "put their heads right" and how it's "for their own good" in an allegedly-eloquent "aw, shucks" tone.
- The Film of the Book: Based on a 1965 novel by Donn Pearce, who co-wrote the screenplay with Frank Pierson.
- Foreshadowing: The magazine page opposite the photo of Luke has a picture of a man aiming a rifle at him.
- For Your Own Good: When Luke is captured after his first escape attempt and fit into chains before the other inmates, the Captain loudly informs Luke, and the prison at large, how the chains will remind him not to try and escape, ending with "For yer own good." Luke dryly replies "I wish you'd stop being so good to me, Captain."
- The Gambler: Everyone in the prison is a gambler and partakes of the communal poker game as well as other bets. Luke wins the respect of others by winning a big pot with a "cool hand" of nothing. Poker players will note that Dragline makes a breech of etiquette by flipping over Luke's mucked hand to reveal his bluff, but Dragline apparently has the clout to do it.
- The Hero Dies: Though not shown onscreen, it's all but outright stated that Luke dies in the end.
- Hood Ornament Hottie: The road crew is forced to watch a sexy blond temptress wash her car.
- Inexplicable Cornered Escape: Luke manages to escape the second time merely due to hiding behind relatively small brushes. No trees in immediate proximity, nothing to use as a hiding cover really. All of this in the middle of a steppe, with the guards watching his place, having high ground and holding a rifle at the ready. Still Luke escapes despite having a chain on his legs and being under a close watch of guards standing maybe a hundred metres away from him.
- Kick the Dog: The guards seem tough but relatively fair up until they force Luke into the box after his mother dies to prevent him from getting "the itch" to run away. Luke protests that it "isn't right," and it's what sparks Luke's desire to run.
- Meaningful Echo: When Luke is told to give up during his third escape attempt, he called out to the Captain, "What we've got here is failure to communicate!" This is a repeat of the Captain's earlier statement to Luke.
- Messianic Archetype: Luke receives a Crucified Hero Shot early in the film. In the end, is murdered by the guards, having refused to back down, and his inspirational legend is spread to the other prisoners by Dragline in a very Jesus-like manner.
- My Girl Is Not a Slut: When Dragline goes on about "Lucille" and how ridiculously sexy she is without even meaning to do it, Luke points out how she was very obviously cockteasing the men.Dragline: Oh, god...she doesn't know what she's doin'!Luke: Oh, boy, she knows exactly what she's doin'. Drivin' us crazy and lovin' every minute of it.Dragline: Shut your mouth about my Lucille.
- Nay-Theist: Some might say that Luke is actually an atheist but what we've got here really is not that simple. When a guard starts wondering whether and why he is an atheist, Luke just cuts him short implying that the subject matter is sort of out of the guard's league. Luke knows songs with religious motives and plays one. There are a few times he addresses God directly in his speech in a mocking way. He calls God an old man and a hard case.
- Never Learned to Read: Dragline has to hand things over to other prisoners to read for him. He doesn't even try to recognize the name on an envelope mailed to him, so he's apparently fully illiterate.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Luke's "I got my mind right, boss" act could be seen as a variant of this.
- One-Liner Echo: Luke's final sentence, "What we have here is a failure to communicate," is taken from a speech by the evil warden.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: We never learn the actual names of the inmates besides Luke, although Dragline is briefly addressed as "Clarence" at one point.
- Pet the Dog: Luke notices that after tricking a boy using Reverse Psychology, the boy started sulking. Before leaving, Luke tries to make amends by letting the boy know that the bloodhounds' impending reaction to the chili powder will be hilarious.
- Poor Man's Porn:
- At one point Fixer is shown reading aloud from an erotic paperback novel.
- Luke sends Dragline a picture of himself arm-in-arm with two beautiful women dressed for a night on the town. Dragline pimps the picture out to his fellow prisoners.
- Prisoner Performance: Downplayed where one of the inmates, played by Harry Dean Stanton, has acquired a guitar somehow or other and occasionally serenades the other prisoners with old blues and country songs, but it's not on any kind of stage or in any kind of official capacity. In another scene, Luke himself uses the banjo given to him by his brother and plays "Plastic Jesus" while the other prisoners listen.
- Prisoner's Work: We see the prisoners working the field and building roads.
- Punishment Box: Virtually all infractions at the prison are punished by time spent "in the box."
- Real Life Writes the Plot: The director loved Morgan Woodward as Boss Godfrey, but he found that his voice didn't match how intimidating the character needed to be. So all of Woodward's dialogue was removed and his character became The Voiceless.
- Reverse Psychology: Luke convinces a local town boy to fetch an axe for him by stating confidently that the boy is not strong enough to chop his manacles off. The boy leaps to prove him wrong. Amusingly, Luke takes the axe away before giving him a chance to try, causing the boy to sulk away.
- Returning War Vet: When reading Luke's file, the Captain notes that Luke earned a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and several Purple Hearts during the last war, yet he left the military at the same rank he entered: buck private. This implies both Luke's great capacity to achieve as well as his stubborn self-sabotage.
- Rule of Symbolism:
- After the egg eating contest, Luke is in a pose that is suspiciously like Jesus on the cross and Luke has a brother named John.
- Luke fishes a dead snapping turtle out of a pond and notes how it still grips the stick in its jaws. Like Luke, it does not give up even beyond death.
- Rule of Three: Luke makes three escape attempts.
- Sanctuary of Solitude: This at the end, with Luke sneaking into a church to talk to God.
- Self-Inflicted Hell: If Luke would just shut his mouth, keep a low profile, and go along to get along, both his life and his time in prison would be a lot easier. However, due to a rebellious nature that he seems incapable of controlling, he can't do any of these things, and damn does it ever make his life hard.
- Sinister Shades: Boss Godfrey, the walking boss, is only ever seen wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses, causing him to be nicknamed "The Man With No Eyes." The men live in fear of him.
- Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: Luke asks for it in the rain, but gets no response.
- Super-Persistent Predator: An inversion: when Luke escapes prison, he runs so persistently that the bloodhound trailing him runs itself to death.
- Symploce: In the beginning of the movie, Carr delivers the following lines:Carr: Any man with dirty pants on sitting on the bunks spends a night in the box. Any man don't bring back his empty pop bottle spends a night in the box. Any man loud talking spends a night in the box."
- Theme Tune: While not the primary theme, a piece of music used in a scene from the film called the "Tar Sequence" was licensed by ABC to become the news theme for local newscasts on many of their stations until the mid 90's (when the network commissioned a similar but different tune so that they wouldn't have to pay large royalties for its use) and became a critical part of the Eyewitness News local news format, where it is ubiquitous for being the song associated with American local news. Still in use today by Australia's Nine Network for their theme.
- Title Drop: Luke wins a hand of poker bluffing with "nothing." He comments, "Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand." This is a big establishing moment for his personality.
- The Trickster: Luke has a disrupting influence on the day-to-day life in the prison.
- Uncertain Doom: We don't see Luke's death, but the warden refuses the opportunity to take him to a nearby clinic to treat his gunshot wound and instead opts to return him to the prison hospital, an hour away. One of the deputies opines that Luke will never survive the trip.
- Uncommon Time: The "Tar Sequence" is in 5/4, by Lalo Schifrin (who also created the Mission: Impossible theme in 5/4).
- Wardens Are Evil: The Captain is the sadistic warden of a chain gang prison. He ruthlessly mistreats Luke by locking him in a punishment box and having him beaten.
- What Were You Thinking?: The Captain asks Luke what he thought defacing parking meters would get him. Luke replies that, being drunk at the time, he probably wasn't thinking.
- Working on the Chain Gang: Luke is sentenced to two years of chain gang service after beheading some parking meters. Even those at the yard seem surprised at the uncommon crime and disproportionate punishment.
