Writer-director Brian Helgeland’s films often examine the darker forces that pull people in, often to their own detriment. Helgeland’s script for L.A. Confidential earned him an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and his directorial endeavors include Payback and Legend. His newest film, Finestkind, tells the story of two estranged half-brothers who get involved with organized crime in his hometown of Boston.
More: Director Brian Helgeland on his family drama Finestkind (The Treatment, 2023)
For his Treat, Helgeland plainly states that 1967’s Cool Hand Luke ranks among the best of Western civilization's artistic achievements. He argues Paul Newman’s portrayal of Lucas “Luke” Jackson, a veteran sentenced to two years in a chain gang for cutting the heads off parking meters, is a performance of an “unbreakable character” who exemplifies standing up to the man.
More: Brian Helgeland (The Treatment, 2003)
This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
When I was growing up — on Channel 38 in Boston, or it might have been Channel 56, I forget which one — they would run Cool Hand Luke. Every time I turned the [on] TV it was on. It's one of those movies, the greatest movies you judge by: ‘I'll watch it no matter where I come in on.’ There could be 20 minutes left and I'm gonna watch this.
I love that character because he means everything and means nothing, in a way. He goes to prison for cutting the heads off parking meters when he's drunk. He probably got a ticket, he's pissed off, and he's gonna cut the heads off all these things. And by the end of the movie, it's led him to completely standing up to the entire prison system, he's digging his own grave, and he's gonna die.
It's all about the power of one, whether he's eaten 50 eggs or digging his own grave, he's gonna do it his way and no one's gonna break him.
George Kennedy's gonna beat the s*** out of him, but he can't break him. The guards can beat the crap out of him… they can't break him [until] finally, they do, because that's what happens. It's the ultimate “the man” movie. It's him against the man. It's the power of one.
It made me aware of dialogue in a way without knowing it. As a prison guard gives all the rules, ‘if you do this you're going into the box, if you do this you're going into the box’, and it's long – it's probably a page and a half of dialogue. And of course, [Luke is] gonna do all those things because the box is the place you don't want to end up. So, of course, he has to go there to see if he can survive it or not, which he does. He comes in the same way as he comes out.
When he gets killed at the end of that movie, no matter how old I was when I saw it – I was 12, or later in life – I always feel like my best friend [or] my big brother, the person I admire, the person I want to be in life, [that] they finally got beat down. But they never really break him. It is the highest achievement in art in the history of Western civilization. And I'll fight anybody who disagrees.
