Cool Hand Luke is a 1967 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Paul Newman. The screenplay was adapted by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson from Pearce's 1965 novel of the same name. The film features George Kennedy, Strother Martin, J.D. Cannon and Morgan Woodward. Newman stars in the title role as Luke, a prisoner in a Florida prison camp who refuses to submit to the system. In 2005, the United States Library of Congress deemed Cool Hand Luke to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Lucas Jackson (Paul Newman) is arrested for cutting the heads off a town's parking meters one drunken night in the late 1940s. He is sentenced to two years in prison and sent to a Florida prison camp, run by the heartless Captain (Strother Martin). Luke is revealed to be a decorated World War II veteran, and is initially known to the other prisoners as "Lucas War-Hero." Luke fails to observe...