Cool Hand Luke
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 inCool Hand Luke. And before he became familiar as a sidekick in 1970s disaster movies (Earthquakeand theAirportmovies), 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 ofOne Flew over the Cuckoo's NestorThe 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