This is going to sound bad. Hud is a really good movie and I don't like it, so this entry will be shorter than others. Can you guess why I don't like it? One, a lot of bad things happen to cows, none of whom are turned into steaks or brisket, which I feel is the highest calling of a cow, not that I want to see it happen because, well, I'm a coward. Bad things also happen to some Texas Longhorns and I don't want to see that happen because that's my school mascot. Hook 'em! Then very closely is the fact that in this film Paul Newman plays the titular bad guy and he is damn good at it.
So, there's Hud, his dad, Homer, his nephew, Lonnie and the maid Alma. Basically, Hud butts heads with his dad over his dead brother and some diseased cattle and the fact that Hud is a jerk. No, really. He wants to sell the diseased cattle to someone else and tries to rape the maid, who is later like, "You should have just asked." Okay then.Your Oscar trivia for the day is that Patricia Neal actually won an Oscar for the part of Alma and oh, yeah, Paul lost again. Lonnie is constantly torn between his grandfather's ethics and Hud's charm. Eventually he chooses ethics. Oh, well.
So, here is the classic example of Paul Newman being a character actor trapped in a leading man's body. He is such a jerk in this movie, but audiences still loved him, despite his desire to break the conventions of cinema and leading man roles, which he did get to do, but it was like it never got acknowledged. The film takes no detours to having Hud become a good guy, he just doesn't. The likeability factor could not have been really surprising to the filmmakers, take a look at the poster, they had to know people were coming to see Paul Newman and they probably didn't care what he did. Oh, well, Paul, I guess you can't get everything.
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