Word: luke
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Director Stuart Rosenberg has chosen such a Florida chain gang as a microcosm of society for his first feature-length film, Cool Hand Luke. Into it, he plunks a hero, Lucas Jackson, doing two years' hard labor for "maliciously destroying municipal property while under the influence ... Knocking the heads off parking meters...
...Luke, played tightly but exuberantly by Paul New man, is a common man who is heading for trouble, everyone warns him, because he won't stay down. He portrays Christ as Rebel, the peasant radical elevated to deity, similar to Christ in Pasolini's Marxist-oriented The Gospel According to Saint Matthew...
Arrested for knocking the tops off parking meters, Luke (Paul Newman) draws a two-year sentence. For a drifter who finds even open society confining, prison ought to prove unbearable, but Luke plays it cool. Eventually, he wins over his most hostile fellow inmates by refusing to knuckle under to the sadistic guards. One day he receives a telegram that his mother has died. She is his last tenuous touch with the outside world, and under the strain, he finally cracks. Sitting on his bunk, Luke, an avowed village atheist, brokenly sings a parody of an oldtimey hymn...
...week later he goes over the hill. Quickly trapped, he remains indomitable, escaping again and again-only to be caught each time. By now he has become almost a legend to the prisoners, who vicariously enjoy his flings at freedom. But when the jailers beat and overwork Luke until he grovels at their feet for mercy, the inmates turn their backs on him. Luke, played by Newman with his customary cocky resilience, has one more race up his sleeve, steals a truck when the guards casually turn their backs on him, and zooms off. Chain Gang showed Paul Man failing...
...Director Stuart Rosenberg (The Defenders) distinguishes his first full-fledged feature by fragmenting his mob of a cast into many highly individual sufferers. His occasional failures are those of ambition, not laxness. The heavy-handed Christian symbolism-Luke is several times shown in crucified positions and has some unconvincing monologues with the God he doesn't believe in-is not only labored but out of style with the rest of the film. Rosenberg's treatment of evil, personified by the brutal prison guards, descends too often from portrayal to caricature. Still, there is enough left...