"Cool Hand Luke" (1967) Dir. Stuart Rosenberg

Whoooaaa the 60s, mannnnnn.

As I watched this movie for first time in a good 5 years or so, my girlfriend asked me why I liked it after the 3rd or 4th time something horribly demoralizing happens to ol' Luke in the southern prison camp he gets tossed in after a night of drunkenly chopping off the tops of parking meters. It was a fair question that made me pause, but I came up with a few reasons.

• The most obvious reason is Paul Newman. This was one of his career defining roles they say and you can't help but like his rascally and uppity nature. Newman was 42 when he made this movie, his hair was already starting to grey, but he was really in his prime from what I can tell. The dude was a stud. And I swear to god, 75% of his dialogue begins with "Yeah, well....(enter nonsensical musing here)."
• Maybe one of the reasons I like this movie is that my dad used to quote the famous line "What we have here....is a failure....to communicate" all the damn time when I was younger. That's definitely the reason I sought out the movie in the first place. It's a movie from his generation and it's from the turbulent late 60s which makes it interesting to me on it's own. And Newman's character has been highly influential on damn near 50 years worth of movie protagonists who love to stick it to the man, mannnn.
• The score by Lalo Schifrin is awesome, with a great, simple main theme played on a guitar and some other kinda wild parts like this one song that sounds like several banjos looped with reverb on it. Pretty cool.
• The whole movie is an exercise in subtlety. We hardly know a damn thing about Luke or what has gone on in his life or why he has such a hard time with authority. We get one glimpse into his back-story when his ailing mom, step-brother and nephew roll up in a pickup truck to visit him. Hardly a god damn thing is explicitly said, but we can deduce that Luke's father took off before he was born, his mom is dying from emphysema, he's had a complete falling out with most of his family, he almost got married but shit fell apart and he was always his mom's favorite son. He is stand-offish, but perhaps only because he's embarrassed of his situation. You can tell he cares deep down. They give him his old banjo, his mom is seen silently crying knowing this will be the last time she sees her son and that's it. When Luke receives word later that his mom died, his reaction is utterly heartbreaking.
• The movie must have made a big impression on me when I first saw it because I named one of my old bands after the character Dragline, played by George Kennedy (who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). Dragline's character arc is very interesting. He starts out as morally nebulous and as the top dog amongst the prisoners, he bristles at Luke's smirking and uppity attitude. He's set up as a villian; a huge, hulking illiterate southerner with questionable motives. On Saturdays, the guards allow boxing matches between the prisoners and Dragline naturally challenges Luke and pummels the shit out of him, but Luke refuses to go down. He just keeps getting back up after every knock down. Later that night, Luke bluffs his way to win a huge pot at poker with a nothing hand. After that, ol' Dragline decides he likes Luke's non-traditional ways and becomes his loyal friend and supporter of all of Luke's future antics. But, when Dragline comes along on Luke's final escape attempt, he has that classic and sad "Aw, shit, I've been in prison too long and the outside world scares me" realization and knows that he can't hang with Luke's brash nature.

Watching this movie in 2011 is a bit weird since the cultural context has changed so much, but as far as old and "classic" films go I find "Cool Hand Luke" to be highly watchable and equally funny and sad. I can't say the same for that many older films.