Florida man Lucas “Luke” Jackson is arrested after drunkenly cutting parking meters off their poles. This lands him in a prison chain-gang for 2 years. Though life in prison is hard, his grit, humor, independence, and killer poker face earns him respect and his titular nickname. When Luke learns that his sick mother has died, the prison warden locks Luke in “the box” (generally used for severe punishment) to prevent Luke from trying to escape for the funeral. Now determined, Luke escapes and is captured twice, his punishment growing more severe each time. Seemingly broken in spirit, Luke serves the prison boss until he executes one more cunning escape—I won’t tell you how this one ends.
First thing’s first, Paul Newman is the absolute coolest. Ridiculously cool. Anyway, this film was a sufficiently excellent story and interesting glimpse at a hot, dusty life on a chain-gang. While steady, bleak, and gritty, some pretty charming characters and sequences emerged (though I couldn’t eat a hard boiled egg for a week). Even though you can choose to walk away feeling sad, I found the film to be a rather inspiring statement on independence and challenging authority. Released during the Vietnam War, this must have been immensely punk-rock story. The flick also plays as a religious metaphor—or a reprimand of religion, if one chooses to see it that way.
Finally, the film has been undoubtedly influential on a variety of films that followed, from later prison films like ‘Shawshank’ and ‘Oh Brother’ to more surprising films like ‘Sandlot’ or the second ‘Terminator’. I knew of the film’s famous “What we have here is a failure to communicate” line but had previously unplaced it. Anyway, the film is fun, stoic, alien, and sad. It wasn’t my favorite kind of story, but I still definitely recommend it.