Cool Hand Luke (NTSC) (1967) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Biographies-Cast & Crew Production Notes Theatrical Trailer-2:53
Rating
Year Of Production	1967
Running Time	126:29
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Stuart Rosenberg
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Paul Newman George Kennedy J D Cannon Lou Antonio Robert Drivas Strother Martin Jo Van Fleet Dennis Hopper Wayne Rogers
Case	?
RPI	$36.95	Music	Lalo Schifrin

Video (NTSC)		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	480i (NTSC)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Spanish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

    This is a fairly simple story of a man who didn't know how to give up.

    We meet Luke (Paul Newman) during the opening credits. He's drunk, and cutting the heads off parking meters. Who can't sympathise with that as a pastime?

    Unfortunately, the judge must have been rather unsympathetic, because the next thing we know Luke has been sentenced to two years on a road gang. This kind of prison doesn't exist today (as far as I know). The inmates are taken out every day to do maintenance work on the roads — they cut roadside weeds, shovel out clogged ditches, even re-tar the roads on occasion. These days it seems that's regarded as inhumane treatment for prisoners; we reserve this kind of work for work-for-the-dole programme participants (or something like that...).

    Conditions at night aren't a lot of fun. The slightest infraction leads to a night in "the box" — a shed smaller than an outside lavatory where the occupant cannot sit or lie in any kind of comfort. This seems reminiscent of the movies about World War II prisoner-of-war camps.

    The prisoners are required to address the prison warden (Strother Martin) as Captain, and the guards as Boss. They are required to ask permission for everything, even permission to wipe their brow when sweating, and they do a lot of sweating on the road gang. It's not a chain gang, not for all of them — a man isn't put in leg irons unless he has tried to escape.

    Luke is not a man to make an effort to fit in. He's not actively a troublemaker - he keeps silent a lot of the time. But he resists the regimentation in his own quiet way. This does not make the prison warden happy, and he sets out to break Luke's will (or should that be "won't"?). That conflict is at the heart of this film.

    Some people regard this as Paul Newman's greatest film. I don't. He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for this role, and fair enough, but he has made some marvellous movies (and no, I'm not silly enough to try to nominate one of them as his best...).

    There are some familiar faces in this movie, and not just among the stars. Sure, George Kennedy is obvious as Dragline, but watch out for Wayne Rogers (best known as Trapper in M*A*S*H on TV) as Gambler, and Dennis Hopper as Babalugats.

    In simple terms, this is a classic film, and one which will endure. It deserves a place in many collections.

Video

    If your system cannot display NTSC, please stop reading now — this disc is another of Warner Home Video's Region 4 NTSC efforts.

    This transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced. That's the original theatrical aspect ratio, so no complaints there.

    The image is only middling sharp, but clear enough — it's one of those transfers that's clear in close-up, and blurry in long shots, and the long shots aren't helped by some haloing. There's little in the way of film grain. Shadow detail is reasonably good, and there's no low-level noise. Blacks don't always get to black, though, sometimes stopping at a rather dark grey.

    Colour is a bit variable — skin tones are not consistent, but you have to be fairly picky to be bothered by it — it might well be the lighting. There's not a lot of colour bleed, and there's no oversaturation.

    There are continual film artefacts, but almost all of them are fairly small. The reel change markings (indicating that this was taken from a display print) are black, which are less intrusive than white ones; the ones I noticed were at 18:12, 56:51, 98:36, and 126:16, so I missed a couple.

    There is some aliasing, especially in long shots, but it is mostly not too bad. There's no moire to talk of, and no noticeable MPEG artefacts.

    There are subtitles in English, French, and Spanish. They are fairly accurate, well-timed, and quite easy to read. I did spot an error, though: at 17:53 Wayne Rogers says, in reply to an offered bet that Paul Newman won't make it, "You on", but he's subtitled as "He won't", which has the opposite sense of what was really said.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered. Given that the movie is over two hours, that's fairly cramped. This suggests that the reason for the poor quality of backgrounds and long shots is that the video is over-compressed.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English, French, and Spanish, all in Dolby Digital 1.0. That's unequivocally mono, and that's not a problem, given that the film was mono when it was made.

    The dialogue is clear enough, even with the prevalence of Southern accents. There are no obvious audio sync problems.

    This is a Lalo Schifrin score, and that's not a bad thing. Paul Newman sings an odd little song about a plastic Jesus.

    A mono soundtrack uses nothing but the centre channel speaker — all those expensive speakers sitting there jealous of the one that's got something to do.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menus are primitive, reminiscent of the late 1990s, when DVD was young. It is not surprising to learn that the Region 1 disc from which this is taken was released in 1997.

Bios — Cast and Crew

    Short text bios of seven cast members and the director. Paul Newman's bios is decent, but some of the others are quite brief.

Production Notes

    Four pages of text.

Theatrical Trailer (2:53)

    Surprisingly, this trailer is presented in 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced.

Film Flash

    Sounds interesting, but it's just a single page showing the covers of four other movies they suggest you might be interested in.

    Region 1 scored this film in 1997, released as one of those double-sided discs, with the widescreen version on one side, and the full-screen version on the other. I am convinced that this disc is simply a copy of the widescreen side of that disc. I suppose it could be worse — it could have been the full-screen side...

    Cool Hand Luke is a classic movie, on a mediocre disc.

    The video quality is not very good, and it's NTSC.

    The audio quality is good enough.

    The extras are primitive.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall