Prisoner of Grace

The chain-gang picture has been in stir for years. Now it has turned up again, paroled as Cool Hand Luke, a close study of conditions in a Southern prison. Like its most celebrated predecessor, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Luke is the story of a simple man who falls afoul of the law and mechanically becomes destroyed by a so-called house of correction.

Arrested for knocking the tops off parking meters, Luke (Paul Newman) draws a two-year sentence. For a drifter who finds even open society confining, prison ought to prove unbearable, but Luke plays it cool. Eventually, he wins over his most hostile fellow inmates by refusing to knuckle under to the sadistic guards. One day he receives a telegram that his mother has died. She is his last tenuous touch with the outside world, and under the strain, he finally cracks. Sitting on his bunk, Luke, an avowed village atheist, brokenly sings a parody of an oldtimey hymn: "I don't care if it rains or freezes/long as I got my plastic Jesus/sitting on the dashboard of my car ..."

A week later he goes over the hill. Quickly trapped, he remains indomitable, escaping again and again--only to be caught each time. By now he has become almost a legend to the prisoners, who vicariously enjoy his flings at freedom. But when the jailers beat and overwork Luke until he grovels at their feet for mercy, the inmates turn their backs on him. Luke, played by Newman with his customary cocky resilience, has one more race up his sleeve, steals a truck when the guards casually turn their backs on him, and zooms off. Chain Gang showed Paul Man failing with success--he made good his escape, but turned to crime to stay alive. Paul Newman succeeds by failing. His end is tragic, but he again becomes a folk hero to the men he leaves behind.

TV Director Stuart Rosenberg (The Defenders) distinguishes his first full-fledged feature by fragmenting his mob of a cast into many highly individual sufferers. His occasional failures are those of ambition, not laxness. The heavy-handed Christian symbolism--Luke is several times shown in crucified positions and has some unconvincing monologues with the God he doesn't believe in--is not only labored but out of style with the rest of the film. Rosenberg's treatment of evil, personified by the brutal prison guards, descends too often from portrayal to caricature. Still, there is enough left in the old theme to make Luke a prisoner of grace, and a picture of chilling dramatic power.

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