"Natural-born world-shaker" Luke Jackson (Paul Newman, in the first of four collaborations with director Stuart Rosenberg) joins the barracks of a Southern chain gang after being sentenced to two years’ labor for the crime of beheading multiple municipal parking meters. While bunking with the other prisoners, largely passive to the orders of the merciless watchmen, Luke’s defiant guile under the hot Florida sun eventually inspires non-compliance among his peers. 

In one of the more prominent pieces of non-conformist cinema, COOL HAND LUKE features a notable ensemble of the New Hollywood era, including the unforgettable powerhouse George Kennedy as Luke’s most devoted acolyte, and small cameos from Dennis Hopper and Harry Dean Stanton. Yet, Newman's performance is everlasting, ushering the existential dilemma of man through a petty criminal’s solitary tribulations: familial wounds, combative authorities, and the prideful undertaking of eating a "nice round number" of hard-boiled eggs — an amount that might make a lesser man’s stomach turn. (CRC)