A classic

Since I’m a big fan of Paul Newman and since this movie is one of his most famous movies, I was really eager to check it out and I had some really high expectations. Well, eventually, even though I did like it, to be honest, I didn’t really blow me away after all. I mean, sure, it was well made and quite entertaining but, in my opinion, the whole thing was just too conventional.  I don’t know, maybe I have seen too many movies about the same subject that were released afterwards. Still, there is no doubt that Paul Newman gave a really strong performance and he is probably the reason why this movie has such a great reputation. Indeed, at first, you might think that he is going to be your typical macho hero but he went much beyond that delivering a complex and really conflicted character. Basically, from the beginning until the end, you are never really sure what’s the deal with this guy. I could relate with him in the sense that I never cared about discipline and rules myself and I always got in trouble at school and, to a lesser extent, even at work, but the big difference between me and Luke is that I always had a rather healthy survival instinct. As a result, I usually knew when to stop in order to prevent some completely unfixable damages. On the other hand, Luke didn’t seem to care much about anything and displayed a total lack of self-preservation and, in spite of his awesome charisma, Newman managed to deliver one of the most destructive anti-hero I have seen. Anyway, to conclude, even though the movie itself was nothing really amazing, Paul Newman was just terrific and, only for him, the damned thing is definitely worth a look.