Best Prison Movies of All Time

I was in the driveway this morning washing my wife's car when I was reminded of a particular scene from Cool Hand Luke.  Those who have seen the movie know the scene I am talking about.  Anyway, when I went in to eat lunch, I turned the channel, and what movie should be on?  That's right, Cool Hand Luke.  Particularly what scene was it on?  You guessed it, the car wash scene.  If that wasn't a sign to blog, I don't know what is?

So the topic for this blog is a top 5 list of the best prison movies.  I kept the list to (mostly) recent movies and all whose plots take place in domestic prisons, not POW stuff.  Therefore you won't see Victory or The Great Escape, though those are both great movies.  It's no surprise that Cool Hand Luke made the list.  Enjoy, and feel free to comment.

1. The Shawshank Redemption- The only movie that bested the book that preceded it.  No disrespect to Steven King for he wrote the novella first, but the additions made to that first person narrative put this great story at the top of the list.  And it is the story that makes it.  Innocent man framed for the murder of his wife and her lover spends nineteen years in prison, yet has a secret life that nobody knows about, leading him "through 500 yards of s***-smelling foulness that I can't even imagine," to the other side where he is not only redemed, but takes down the real crooks, the warden and his hench man.  As always, Morgan Freeman is brilliant, taking a seat only to Timothy Robbins who was actually the second choice to play Andy Dufresne (they wanted Tom Hanks- as great as Tom Hanks is, can you imagine him playing Andy as well as Robbins?  I can't.)  "Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things.  And no good thing ever dies."  Steven King is all about poetic justice, and from that standpoint, this movie is...perfect.

2. Cool Hand Luke- Wow, how I wanted to put this movie at #1 on my list, but the Shawshank's story is better.  Any movie starring Paul Newman deserves respect, and other than Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, this may be Newman's best role.  A man who won't lay down, won't be tamed.  To borrow a title from Maya Angelou, "I know why the caged bird sings."  Between the ditch full of dirt and Luke's 50 eggs, this movie is classic.  It is full of famous quotes.  "Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand."  "Anything so innocent and built like that just gotta be named Lucille."  Guns and Roses even used the following quote in one of their songs: "What we got here is failure to communicate."  Maybe that's what knocked this movie down into the #2 spot.

3. Escape from Alcatraz- Notice how all these great movies have one thing in common?  A great actor in the lead role.  Clint Eastwood.  That should be enough, but I will say a bit more.  It wasn't his best role or performance, but the fact that this is based on a true story makes it interesting.  The scene where the warden sees the chrysanthemum on the adjacent island and crushes it in his hands with that scowl of defeat, it's a beautiful thing. "Some men are destined to never leave Alcatraz...alive."  Ha, yeah right!

4. The Green Mile- Another of Steven King's works.  The story of John Coffey whose initials JC and his sacrificial death incidentally mimic that of Jesus Christ.  I'm not one for sci-fi stuff, but the scene where John Coffey takes the cancer from the warden's wife and gives it to the little weasel prison guard who in turn shoots Wild Bill and ends up in the mental institution to which he was about to be transferred... what a web of poetic justice...and strange besides.  When King was writing the book, he actually didn't know if Coffey would be executed in the end or escape.  I wish he had chosen escape, but we all knew that Coffey had to die.

5. Ernest Goes to Jail- Just joking.  It feels wrong to put another movie on this list with the four heavyweights from above, but if I had to, I would choose The Rock.  Though Nicholas Cage really, excessively overacts in this film, it does have Sean Connery and Ed Harris and a few good lines.  "I'd take pleasure in guttin' you, boy!"  "Hey honey, do you want to know who shot JFK?"