Cool Hand Luke
1967
🎯 Verdict
✍️ Full Review
This is the prison drama right up my alley, the right kind of Shawshank Redemption I have been searching for. A mysterious man who has nothing riding for him in life becomes a legend of some sort and Paul Newman was born for this role. Remarkable in its study of the path that he takes, laughing at the big man, both above and front, Newman smiles unassumingly like he's got a death wish without a care in the world. Never-dying hope and backbreaking incorrigible rebel, personified. You see, Andy Dufresne had a plan all along, Luke was there just for the fun of the game. This one has more thematic resemblance with One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest which was yet to come as far as 8 years down the line. But, much more pragmatic about the relationship between the gamblers and the horse and what happens to the horse when the fight in it gradually gets depleted. In this case, it keeps on running. Extraordinarily directed and even more so, in the field of cinematography.