(From IMDB) Luke Jackson (Newman) is a cool, gutsy prisoner who is sentenced to a prison camp for using a pipe cutter to cut the tops off of parking meters and ends up in a Southern chain gang. While refusing to buckle under to authority, Luke keeps escaping and being recaptured. The prisoners admire Luke because, as Dragline (Kennedy) explains it,
"You're an original, that's what you are!"
On the chain gang, Luke encourages the other prisoners, by his own attitude and energy, to excel at their menial tasks. This not only encourages camaraderie among the prisoners, it deprives the guards of a stick to hold over the prisoners' heads. Nevertheless, the camp staff actively works to crush Luke until he finally breaks.
The most famous scene in the movie is when Luke boasts that he can eat 50 hard boiled eggs in one hour:
"It be somethin' to do."
The movie has such a sad ending, but Luke managed to unmask the injustice and hypocrisy of the system in which he was confined. Basically he gave up his life over a parking meter, but in the final analysis he could not be broken by the system.
We will miss you, Mr. Newman ... rest in peace ...
January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008
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