Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Directed by Stuart Rosenberg
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.
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What critics compared Cool Hand Luke to
The situation offers an opportunity for a few movie jokes, a Pixar favorite (expect lots of “Cool Hand Luke” references).
At least this one is wrapped in a fun "Great Escape"-flavored prison-break story, which features nods to "Cool Hand Luke" and "Escape From Alcatraz."
It becomes a straight-up prison-camp escape picture -- modeled very consciously on classic films like "Stalag 17," "The Great Escape" and "Cool Hand Luke," right down to the music -- with the evil warden taking the form of a good-ol'-boy stuffed animal named Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear (voiced to perfection by Ned Beatty).
(The film has all kinds of subtle Cool Hand Luke moments, with Lotso playing Strother Martin to everyone else.)
The toys' breakout from the day-care center winds up being the ballast of "Toy Story 3," which takes its cues from "Cool Hand Luke" and assorted prison-break flicks, and culminates in a scene of near-death, which, after several episodes of darkness and peril, seems gratuitously excessive.
The best of these is Mr. Lotso Huggin Bear, a lavender plush teddy who “smells like strawberries” and, as ingeniously voiced by Ned Beatty, behaves like a deranged hybrid of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof's Big Daddy and the warden from Cool Hand Luke.
When you consider what Hall did for exceptional films such as, Searching For Bobby Fischer, Marathon Man, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, In Cold Blood, Cool Hand Luke, and American Beauty , you know that his work, when combined with the right material, can be mesmerizing.
Like Paul Newman's "Cool Hand Luke," McMurphy is an emblem of determined individualism in a world of conformity, a symbol of people's capacity to overcome odds and accomplish whatever goals they set for themselves no matter what the circumstances.
It is quite similar in plot and theme, to Cool Hand Luke, which predates this movie by eight years but was based on a novel that was most likely influenced by Kesey's.
There, like Randall McMurphy of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Luke will inevitably fulfill and face up to his nature as an existential hero with a countercultural bent.
It actually has a lot in common with the much-rewarded One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which came a decade later.
In a scene lifted from “Cool Hand Luke,” she also washes cars in a pair of mini-shorts, under the eyes of salivating males, yet she fails to win the love of the new teacher, Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), who prefers Miss Squirrel.
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There's a theatrical quality to the writing here, from the prisoners' communal emotion (reminiscent of, say, Stalag 17) to the rich actor's duet played by Newman and Jo Van Fleet as his visiting, dying mother.
Mr. Lurie, who seems more at home in the political world of last year's "The Contender", working from a script by David Scarpa, never creates the emotional tension necessary to propel a story like this to the height of a "Great Escape" or "Cool Hand Luke".
The Last Castle happily trots out a string of clichés familiar from movies such as Cool Hand Luke (Winter makes Irwin repeatedly carry rocks from one end of the prison yard to the other) and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (organising a rebellion against authority, some of the characters etc), yet, to his credit, Lurie makes them work and the pacing of the film carries you along nicely - it’s only later on, after you’ve left the cinema, when you find yourself wondering things such as why, in a prison full of convicts, is everyone so damned nice?
After accidentally insulting Col. Winter's prized collection of military artifacts ("Only a man who has never seen a day of battle collects stuff like this"), Gen. Irwin goes through the obligatory prison movie chestnuts: the scene where the loner sits at the new guy's table; the scene where the jailed bang their cups against the bars in a show of Dead Poets' Society solidarity; and the Cool Hand Luke scenario of digging a hole all day only to fill it in all night.
“Cool Hand Luke” and “Shawshank Redemption” did that too, only doing it much more effectively than “The Last Castle.”
There are similarities to " Cool Hand Luke " and its battle of wills.
The original was directed by Stuart Rosenberg, a competent journeyman with two great films to his credit (Cool Hand Luke and The Pope of Greenwich Village), and at least the first film tried to follow the book.
As for Mr. Statham, his performance can be best summarized with a line from Cool Hand Luke (1967): “What we’ve got here is… failure to communicate.”
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Like Cool Hand Luke stripped of irony, Rocky or Rambo without the slurred stoicism, Max or Martin Riggs with wisecracks omitted, James Caviezel as Jesus is a two-hour whipping boy, a botched bullfight and walking butcher shop whose miraculous teeth remain evenly intact.
He’ll stand up to the bullies because he’s no doubt seen “Cool Hand Luke” or “Rebel without a Cause.”