What if, at the end of "Cool-Hand Luke", in the scene where Luke is being driven away to die in the warden's station wagon, we had been treated to a voice-over on the historic cruelty of the Southern prison farm system??? Would have sorta deflated the whole movie, wouldn't it have??
This is the effect of the Hillary Clinton-ish little speech on male violence we get at the end of this otherwise strong story which leads us up to the tragic conclusion that Wade cannot escape the forces that shaped him. That little monologue clubs us over the head and deflates the whole movie, transforming it from a moderately engrossing story with a good feeling for tragic destiny, to a social uplift screed.
Wade's daughter, who we sympathise with at first, I found to be somewhat of an unlikeable little whiner by the end, especially when she snubs Wade's desperate efforts to buy her a Big Mac because "junk food is bad for you." (When she whined "I want to go home" for the 100th time, I wanted Wade to say "Fine by me!", and turn the truck around). Coburn's performance is a bit ham-handed and the script doesn't help him at the end when it calls for him to "congratulate" Wade at the point when the son seems, a bit too obviously, to have finally become his father. The murder mystery subplot seems a cheap device to try to give the movie some box office boost, and is completely gratuitous.
Having said that, Nolte's beautifully-paced performance does have a gripping urgency to it, as Wade tries more and more desperately, against the odds, to escape his destiny. The tone of the movie is wonderfully bleak and foreboding, and the sense of impending doom is well-conveyed. The final scene, of Wade sitting, drinking, at the kitchen table with the window framing the burning barn outside, is a memorably powerful image. Unfortunately it is destroyed by that awful voiceover.
The movie is still, however, far superior to most of the dreck coming out of Hollywood nowadays.
This is the effect of the Hillary Clinton-ish little speech on male violence we get at the end of this otherwise strong story which leads us up to the tragic conclusion that Wade cannot escape the forces that shaped him. That little monologue clubs us over the head and deflates the whole movie, transforming it from a moderately engrossing story with a good feeling for tragic destiny, to a social uplift screed.
Wade's daughter, who we sympathise with at first, I found to be somewhat of an unlikeable little whiner by the end, especially when she snubs Wade's desperate efforts to buy her a Big Mac because "junk food is bad for you." (When she whined "I want to go home" for the 100th time, I wanted Wade to say "Fine by me!", and turn the truck around). Coburn's performance is a bit ham-handed and the script doesn't help him at the end when it calls for him to "congratulate" Wade at the point when the son seems, a bit too obviously, to have finally become his father. The murder mystery subplot seems a cheap device to try to give the movie some box office boost, and is completely gratuitous.
Having said that, Nolte's beautifully-paced performance does have a gripping urgency to it, as Wade tries more and more desperately, against the odds, to escape his destiny. The tone of the movie is wonderfully bleak and foreboding, and the sense of impending doom is well-conveyed. The final scene, of Wade sitting, drinking, at the kitchen table with the window framing the burning barn outside, is a memorably powerful image. Unfortunately it is destroyed by that awful voiceover.
The movie is still, however, far superior to most of the dreck coming out of Hollywood nowadays.