272 - Cool Hand Luke

Eavesdropping at the Movies · Jan 27, 2021 · 34m

A key film in Paul Newman's career that gave us one of cinema's most iconic lines, Cool Hand Luke is known to both Mike and José - but previously seen by neither. The reasons that it became a cultural touchstone remain crystal clear, despite it failing, to a significant degree, to grab us as it might. We question the authenticity and purpose of Luke's rebellion, the depiction of prison life, and the flimsy Christian allegory that tirelessly insists upon itself. The brutality perhaps seems unfairly tame today, an unavoidable consequence of coming to the film more than fifty years late, but its…