History Film / CoolHandLuke

Music/LaloSchifrin's score is well known for its "Tar Sequence" piece, which would go on to be used as theme music for news programs on various Creator/{{ABC|US}} owned stations. Australia's ''Creator/NineNetwork'' news program, ''Nine News Australia'', still uses it to this day.

Music/LaloSchifrin's score is well known for its "Tar Sequence" piece, which would go on to be used as theme music for news programs on various Creator/{{ABC}} owned stations. Australia's ''Creator/NineNetwork'' news program, ''Nine News Australia'', still uses it to this day.

''Cool Hand Luke'' is a 1967 drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Creator/PaulNewman. It is based on the novel of the same name by Donn Pearce.

It is the story of one Lucas "Luke" Jackson (Newman) during his stay at a Florida prison camp sometime in the late [[TheForties Forties]] or early [[TheFifties Fifties]], and how he stands up to the system within the camp.

* CaptivityHarmonica: Luke's banjo is the resident musical instrument of the prison, used to belt out many a prison song.

* DefiantToTheEnd: [[spoiler:Luke refuses to surrender and return to imprisonment even though it would spare his life,]] complete with IronicEcho ("What we've got here is a failure to communicate").

** Luke fishes a dead snapping turtle out of a pond and notes how it still grips the stick in its jaws. Like Luke, [[spoiler:it does not give up even beyond death]].

''Cool Hand Luke'' is a 1967 drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Creator/PaulNewman.

* AlcoholInducedIdiocy: Luke's in jail because he got drunk and decided to decapitate some parking meters. Pretty much everyone who hears that this was his crime remarks on the sheer pointless stupidity of it.
-->'''Luke:''' Small town, not much to do in the evenin'.
* AllCrimesAreEqual: Subverted. Luke's stay was supposed to be short (two years), but his antics increase that number.
%% * ArchEnemy: The Captain to Luke Jackson.
* BalloonBelly: There is a shot focusing on Luke's swollen belly after he eats fifty hard-boiled eggs.
* TheBet: Dragline bets that Luke can eat anything. Luke boasts that he can eat fifty hard-boiled eggs in one hour.
%% * BigBad: The Captain.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Luke dies and the camp goes back to normal, but the camp director has been one-upped and his [[TheDragon 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.]]
* BullyTurnedBuddy: The relationship between Luke (Paul Newman) and boss prisoner Dragline (George Kennedy) becomes this. Luke is forced into a fight with the much stronger prison bully, whom he shames in front of a crowd by refusing to fall down and take his beating. After this Dragline's new respect turns into friendship.
%% * CaptivityHarmonica: Luke's banjo is a variation.

%% * CoolShades: The evil prison warder in his impenetrable mirror shades.

* CrucifiedHeroShot: After the infamous Fifty Eggs contest... strangely enough. There's also the way [[spoiler: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.
* DarkestHour: [[spoiler: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.]]
* DefeatMeansFriendship: For a given value of "defeat". Luke and Dragline start off as rivals and eventually find themselves in a boxing match. While Luke doesn't really beat him, he just keeps getting back up after getting knocked down, making Dragline quit out of tiredness. They soon become friends after that.

* DelusionsOfEloquence: 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.

%% * EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The Captain.

* FanserviceCarWash: One of the more famous scenes the film has the prisoners watching a blonde bombshell wash her car.

* KickTheDog: During the scene when Luke has to repeatedly dig a ditch then fill it back in again, the spade the guards give him is one with a broad, flat head. A spade like this is designed for digging in loose soil or sand, not hard packed dirt. While it gets easier once he has dug the initial hole, it does take him an entire night just to dig it out the first time, and he's so exhausted he can barely move.
%% * MeaningfulEcho: "What we've got here is failure to communicate!"
%% * MessianicArchetype: Luke

* NayTheist: 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.

* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: We never learn the actual names of the inmates besides Luke, although Dragline is briefly addressed as "Clarence" at one point. [[spoiler:In the novel his given name is revealed to be Clarence Slidell.]]
* PoorMansPorn: At one point Fixer is shown reading aloud from an erotic paperback novel.

%% * PunishmentBox: The TropeCodifier.

* ReturningWarVet: Luke is one of these (whether from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII or [[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar Korea]] isn't specified in the film, though in the novel it's the former). It's revealed that, despite having made sergeant and earned several citations during his time in the Army, he'd also done time in the stockade and gotten busted back down to private by the time he was discharged. Whether his problems with authority and general anti-social behavior are a product, or a cause, of his war experiences is never really addressed.
* RuleOfSymbolism: After the egg eating contest, Luke is in a pose that is suspiciously like Jesus on the cross and [[Literature/TheBible Luke]] has a brother named [[Literature/TheFourGospels John]].
%% * RuleOfThree: [[spoiler:Luke's punishment,]] and his [[spoiler: three attempts of running.]]

* ScaryShinyGlasses: Donned by Boss Godfrey, also known as "The Man With No Eyes." Who [[TheVoiceless never talks]]. And who you do ''not'' talk to.

* SinisterShades: Boss Godfrey wears a pair of these while overseeing the prisoners in the hot sun.

%% * TheTrickster: Luke has a disrupting influence on the day-to-day life in the prison.

%% * UncommonTime: The "Tar Sequence" is in 5/4, by Music/LaloSchifrin (who also created the ''Series/MissionImpossible'' theme in 5/4).

* NayTheist: Some might say that Luke is really an atheist but for one he expresses too much passion about the religion. 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.

%% * DefiantToTheEnd: [[spoiler:Luke]] complete with IronicEcho ("What we've got here is a failure to communicate").

%% * TheHeroDies: [[spoiler:Luke himself at the end.]]

%% * SmiteMeOhMightySmiter: Asks for it in the rain. No response.

%% * WorkingOnTheChainGang: What Luke does in-between several prison breaks.

* AllCrimesAreEqual: Subverted. Luke's stay was supposed to be short (three to six months), but his antics increase that number.

* TheBet: Dragline bets that Luke can eat fifty hard-boiled eggs in one hour.

* PrisonerPerformance: {{Downplayed|Trope}} where one of the inmates, played by Creator/HarryDeanStanton, has acquired a banjo 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 finds a guitar and plays "Plastic Jesus" while the other prisoners listen.

* InexplicableCorneredEscape: 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 a 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.

* BalloonBelly: There is a shot focusing on Luke's swollen belly after her eats fifty hard-boiled eggs.

%% * BalloonBelly: Fifty eggs, man!...

* UncertainDoom: [[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.]]