Cool Hand Luke

Luke gets drunk, decapitates a row of parking meters, and lands on a Florida chain gang. The whole film is about his refusal to break and how the institution takes that as an insult. Donn Pearce, who wrote the novel, had lived it. He was a merchant seaman, then a counterfeiter and safe cracker, and he wrote the book out of his time on a chain gang in a Florida prison. The line about a failure to communicate sits at number 11 on the American Film Institute's list of the hundred most memorable movie quotations. Screenwriter Frank Pierson worried the phrasing was too complex for a prison captain and invented a background in criminology for him to justify it. George Kennedy won Best Supporting Actor and was direct about the result: his salary was multiplied by ten the minute he won, and he was grateful he no longer had to play only villains. The car wash scene also ran away from them. Joy Harmon auditioned in a bikini without speaking, and a shoot planned for half a day took three. Who it is for: anyone who wants a hero who will not bend, and Paul Newman at close to his best. Who it is not for: viewers looking for hope. The ending is deliberately merciless.