25 Greatest Warner Bros Movies Ever

Picking up a raft of awards nominations, Cool Hand Luke is still rightly considered one of the great american hero movies. Like The Shawshank Redemption, The Great Escape and more recently Starred Up, it's another in the great pantheon of prison-based movies, where the claustrophobic limits of the institution translate to a microcosm where emotions, political ideas and humanity are amplified exponentially.

Cool Hand Luke is a ridiculously punishing movie: it is psychologically brutal, physically torturous and such is the perfect portrayal of the sweltering, oppressive heat of the location that you can't help but feel ever blow. And yet Paul Newman's blu-eyed rock is utterly, impeccably dependable.

This was one of his truly great performances - and one rightly considered iconic. It's not swaggering, there's precious little by way of artifice, but it's completely compelling and irresistibly captivating.