The Lucky Ones – The Geekscape Review
Neil Burger’s last film The Illusionist might be best remembered by readers of this site as “2006’s Magician Movie Not Directed By The Dark Knight Guy And Starring Wolverine vs Batman”. I myself never saw the film, starring Ed Norton and Paul Giamatti, but know that people enjoyed it and it was nominated for several big awards. Here in Hollywood, a lot of the film’s reputation centered over the fighting that occurred between the film’s producers during award season regarding the back end.
If The Illusionist is at all as satisfying a film as The Lucky Ones, I would suggest that you quickly add it to your Netflix cues. Not necessarily the type of movie that Geekscape covers, The Lucky Ones tells the story of three soldiers returning home. Two of them, Colee and TK (played by Rachel McAdams and Michael Pena respectively) are young soldiers on thirty days injured leave. Cheever, played by Tim Robbins, is going home for good after suffering a back injury while working on the base.
After flying together to the States, the three soldiers are met with plane delays and decide to carpool as far as Cheever’s home in St. Louis. Each of these soldiers is wounded, Colee having been shot in the leg and TK having caught shrapnel in the groin, but the healing process has yet to really begin for any of them. During the course of their voyage, which takes them as far as Vegas, the physical injuries that they each carry give way to a shared realization that the homes that they left behind are not the ones that they’ve returned to.
The movie sounds good so far, but not anything that we haven’t seen before on Lifetime. And in the current national climate, a movie like this would be easy prey for falling towards the political left or right. But maybe what impressed me the most, with the strong performances being a very close second, is that Neil Burger and Dirk Wittenborn’s script doesn’t swerve to the left or right. Like the three passengers in the mini-van (the setting for the large majority of the film), The Lucky Ones cuts right through the middle of our country and plows straight ahead. When the voyage is about healing and finding common bonds between diverse individuals, there’s no energy wasted falling on one side of the aisle or the other.
The script and story go between funny moments and tense, emotional pieces very well and the cast works through each sequence handily. If you guys have yet to jump on the Michael Pena bandwagon, this movie should convince you that he’s one of the best young actors in Hollywood. Rachel McAdams gets some of the biggest laughs in the film but then handles the most heart wrenching sequence and biggest blow to her character. Tim Robbin’s Cheevers gets a giant wallop delivered to him early in the film but he comes out of it shaken (probably defeated if not for the help of his two new friends) but with a very focused direction and goal. Colee, when she ultimately gets smacked around in the film, doesn’t have the kind of perception or handle as Cheevers does at twice her age. And you see her take a crash course over the length of the scene while coming to terms with the way things are.
In the end, how does The Lucky Ones serve us, the Geekscapists? Well, I recommended the film to my parents and that’s a good first step. Another good application for the movie is as a non-threatening, relationship date film that will spark conversation that is less political in nature and more about the decisions you would make if caught in the midst of large, life decisions involving loyalty, duty and the family. This isn’t a first date movie but a relationship movie that puts a big focus on individuals thrown into the air by a political situation who search for a place to land on a runway that is unlit and unfamiliar. As they guide each other back onto their own feet, you find a movie that could have gone the familiar route of clichéd imagery and emotional manipulation to provoke a response but instead took the higher ground of unexpected but satisfying storytelling and carefully handled character work.
It’s not Wolverine vs Batman, but it does its job well.
