Screenplay by Donn Pearce and Frank R. Pierson. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg. Featuring:

Paul Newman as Lucas Jackson

George Kennedy as Dragline

Strother Martin as the Captain

Jo Van Fleet as Arletta

J.D. Cannon as Society Red

Wayne Rogers as Gambler

Ralph Waite as Gibson

Harry Dean Stanton

Dennis Hopper

Anthony Zerbe

Parking meter heads falling in the street. Luke, drunk, is cutting the heads off and stacking them neatly by the poles. Police come along and pick him up. Quick cut to the chain gang: convicts asking for permission from the "bosses."

Luke is among the four new convicts arriving on the bus. "Dog Boy" is hanging around the front. The Captain comes out. The guard tells them: call him Captain and them Boss. Lucas Jackson was a hero of World War II, won several medals, but came out a buck private. To serve a two-year sentence for destroying municipal property. The Captain says: "I can be a good guy, or I can be one real mean sumbitch."

The camp sign says: Division of Prisons Road Prison #36. Carr, the inmate camp floorwalker, gives the newcomers' orientation in a quick recitation: all rules violations result in "a night in the box."

The cons come in from the fields. They play poker until lights out at five to eight. They count 50 inmates in two rows of bunk beds. Luke already appears to be challenging Dragline's natural authority over the other men.

The next morning they load up to go work on the roads--two trucks. They talk. They arrive at the work site (16:30). They are down in a ditch cutting weeds with a sling. One convict passes out in the heat. They stop for lunch. Dragline bets that Luke won't make the day. Godfrey, the walking boss with the shades on, shoots a hawk. At the end of the day, Luke is still walking. They lock Gibson in the box for the night in his nightshirt, for asking for another work assignment after the other inmates tricked him. Dragline and Luke have words before lights out.

They go out to work the next day. A voluptuous blonde farm girl in a skimpy dress comes out to wash a car. The men on the gang are in heat. "I'm dying, I'm dying." She is putting on a show for the gang; she rubs soap on herself. Dragline calls her Lucille. That night in bed he calls to her. He talks about her clothing like he relating the story of a princess in a fairy tale.

Luke gets on him. Dragline tells him to save his strength for tomorrow. Quick cut to a boxing match. Dragline keeps knocking Lucas down, but Lucas keeps getting back up. He refuses to stay down. Finally the others grow tired of watching him get hit and begin to turn away. Luke is beat and bloody but won't quit. "You gonna have to kill me," he tells Dragline, who finally walks away, leaving Luke in the ring. Is Luke the winner?

Poker game in the barracks later. With a king showing, Luke keeps raising the bet into a pair of sevens. Luke looks almost bored as he bets. Everyone drops out finally, and he wins with nothing. "Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand." Dragline sits next to him; he likes Luke now (38:00).

On Sunday visitors come. Inmates are jumping rope as Luke comes up to the gate: his brother John has brought Arletta, his mother, to visit. She is in the back of truck, smoking, propped up on a pillow. "A man's gotta go his own way," Luke says. Arletta says she'll be dead when he gets out. She is laughing and starts coughing. "What went wrong?" she asks. When Luke tried to be respectable, he bored the hell out of all of them. She says she's leaving the place to John, because she didn't love him as much. "Laugh it up, kid, you'll make out," is her last advice. John gives Luke a banjo: "Now there ain't nothing to come back for." As Arletta leaves, the inmates are singing "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" in the background. (47:00)

The boss gives the gang a whole road of tarring to do. Luke leads the gang in a concerted burst of high-energy shoveling, putting sand on top of the tar. "Get the man," they're running along the road. (Solidarity among the workers.) They reach the end of the road, and it's two hours of daylight left. They have nothing to do but wait for the truck to pick them up.

Stormy night, a convict is reading a romance novel. It's hot, steamy hot. Dragline is bragging on how much Luke can eat--"the champion hog-gut of the camp"--when Luke spontaneously says he can eat 50 eggs in an hour. It develops into a big-time bet: he has to eat 50 eggs in an hour without throwing up. Luke gets into training for the event.

The contest starts (58:30). Dragline is the official egg-peeler. Luke does pretty well into the 30s; his belly is huge--"like a ripe watermelon." More money is bet. Dragline covers it all; "every cent in camp is riding."

Six minutes to go, nine eggs left. Luke is lying on his back. Thirty seconds to go when the last egg goes in; they check to see if he swallowed it when time expires. He did. He is nearly unconscious when they leave him (in a crucifixion pose). "Nobody can eat 50 eggs," a convict says. Luke smiles (1:04)40).

Luke gets on the wrong side of the walking boss, over the killing of a rattlesnake. In a thunderstorm, Luke stands alone in the rain, defying God to strike him down: he doesn't believe. Is this a search for the meaning of life? Luke has crossed the forces of both God and man.

Luke gets a telegram in camp: his mother is dead. The convicts give him space around his bunk. He picks up his banjo and starts singing: "I don't care it is rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus, sitting on the dashboard of my car. Get yourself a sweet Madonna . . ." The next day they lock Luke in the box, to keep him from running away to his mother's funeral (1:11:30). "Sorry, Luke, I'm just doing my job," the guard says. "You gotta appreciate that." "Calling it your job don't make it right, Boss," Luke says. He is let out after his mother is buried.

The inmates in the barracks celebrate the Fourth of July. They are dancing around to the radio. Luke is cutting a hole in barracks floor with a file. They distract Carr with a porno book. Luke gets over the fence. A second man gets caught on the fence and is put in the box.

The dog Blue has broken loose to chase after Luke. Then the dog-handlers start with the other dogs. Luke leads them on a complicated chase--jumping fences, crossing barnyards, jumping off a train trestle and swimming away.

The police car comes back to camp. The trusty "dog boy" gets out with Blue: Luke has run him to death. The crew is out working on the road later. A car brings Luke back. Honeycutt puts a chain on his legs. The Captain knocks Luke down when he smarts off: "What we've got here is failure to communicate." Luke had been caught driving a "shiny new buggy" when a state trooper saw him at a stop light.

An older guard is talking to Luke about Luke's not believing in God. Luke says "caught short" and goes off in the bushes. The walking boss fires his rifle at him. Luke has tied a string to the bush and run away. The dogs are after him again.

This times Luke goes up to a black farm, where two black boys help him cut his chains off with an axe. They give him pepper and spices to season up the dogs' noses. Luke runs away. The dogs start sneezing and lose the scent. This time Luke gets completely away.

The mail comes. In a magazine for Dragline, there is a picture of Luke with two women. The convicts are excited for him. Luke has become the hero to the boys in camp. They look at his picture in the magazine, which Dragline keeps custody of, when they need hope. Then the guards bring a battered Luke back to camp (1:36:30). The Captain tells him, "You gonna get your mind right," and says to the group, "Take a good look at Luke. Cool Hand Luke."

The convicts want to hear of his exploits in the free world. He tells them the picture is a phony. "Stop feeding off me," he says. They agree he's not himself.

Luke goes back to work in the fields with two chains on. He is punished with a night in the box for eye-balling. When he gets out, he can't eat all his food. The others help him eat it, until it is all gone.

The guards keep after Luke, trying to break his spirit. He is made to dig a ditch on the weekend, when he should be resting. "The Midnight Special" being sung in the background by Harry Dean Stanton. Then they make him fill it up again. When the guard tells him to dig it again, Luke attacks him. He digs the ditch out again in the night. A guard knocks him out in the grave (Is he already a dead man?). "Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down," the convicts sing.

Luke is crying and calling out to God, "Oh God, I pray to God don't hit me any more. I can't take it any more." He is a broken man, holding onto the guard's leg and crying. "I got my mind right."

The cons are ashamed of him. The Captain and other guards are watching as Luke walks back into the barracks. A convict tears up the picture of Luke and the women. Luke is staggering; he says, "Got my mind right." When he falls down, no one helps him up. "Where are you now?" he asks, when he needs help.

Luke has become an abject figure--a figure of pity. One the road he is the water boy. "Fetch the rifle," the walking boss says. He shoots a turtle and tells Luke to fetch it. Luke brings the dead turtle up, and they tell him to cut it up for lunch.

Luke gets in the gravel truck and drives away, bed raised (1:53:45). Dragline hops in, too. Luke has taken the keys to the other two trucks. Dragline is antic, saying Luke fooled the guards into thinking he was broken. Luke says he wasn't fooling: he was broken. It wasn't a trick: "I never planned anything in my life." But he did plan enough to take the keys to the other trucks.

They take off on foot after abandoning the truck (Why not keep driving the truck to get as far away as possible?). Dragline has big plans. Luke wants to go off by himself. Dragline goes the opposite direction.

A storm is coming. Luke takes refuge in a country church. "Anybody here?" "Hey, old man, you home tonight?" Luke has a long personal monologue directed at the God he doesn't believe in. "Where am I supposed to fit in?" "What do I do now?" Luke gets on his knees to pray, peeking up at the steeple. There is no answer. "I guess I got to find my own way."

Dragline enters the church. "They got us, boy." Dragline says they promised not to kill him if he surrenders. Dragline asks him to give up--"play it cool."

Luke goes to the door, facing the authorities waiting in the rain outside. "What we got here is a failure to communicate," he begins, then the walking boss shoots him in the throat through the screen door. Dragline gets him up and walks him outside in the rain. Dragline charges the walking boss and chokes him down, knocking his glasses off. The Captain says he's taking Luke to the prison hospital, an hour away.

Dragline is telling the men in camp about Luke being driven away. "He was smiling--that Luke smile of his." The stuff legends are made of. Dragline works the roads, now with his own set of chains. The picture of Luke, taped together again, is superimposed on the screen at the end (2:06:40).