Lucky – first look review

At the ripe old age of 91, Har­ry Dean Stan­ton could be for­giv­en for tak­ing it easy. Thank­ful­ly, the Alien, Paris, Texas and Twin Peaks star is still going, deliv­er­ing his lat­est act­ing mas­ter­class in John Car­roll Lynch’s impres­sive direc­to­r­i­al debut, Lucky.

The epony­mous Lucky (Stan­ton) is a cig­a­rette-smok­ing, cof­fee-drink­ing lon­er, hap­pi­ly mak­ing his way through life. He has his dai­ly rou­tine, which starts with yoga before break­fast at his local din­er, fol­lowed by a course of game shows in the after­noon. He shares a few pleas­antries here and there with the inhab­i­tants of the small New Mex­i­co town where he lives, and fre­quents his local water­ing hole with his friend Howard (David Lynch). He’s a man who has trimmed his life down to the bare essen­tials, and seems pro­found­ly hap­py because of it.

While Lucky doesn’t talk all that much, what he does say reveals a great deal about his char­ac­ter. A dis­cus­sion around real­ism reveals him to be an athe­ist, far more inter­est­ed in Bloody Marys than Hail Marys. Screen­writ­ers Dra­go Sumon­ja and Logan Sparks avoid the temp­ta­tion of over-com­pli­cat­ing the plot – when Lucky falls at home it is almost set up as a turn­ing point, until Lucky’s doc­tor (Ed Beg­ley Jr in a hilar­i­ous cameo) finds him­self per­plexed by his patient’s good health. Howard’s 100-year-old tur­tle also goes miss­ing in a dis­arm­ing­ly mov­ing seg­ment, but aside from that the film real­ly is all about Stanton’s char­ac­ter work.

As an actor, John Car­roll Lynch has worked with Mar­tin Scors­ese and David Finch­er, but rather than attempt to ape these esteemed film­mak­er he has cre­at­ed a well-paced and refined fea­ture in his own style. Cru­cial­ly, he always keeps the focus on Lucky. There are no long, sweep­ing shots through town, no set-pieces to dis­tract the view­er. Lynch sim­ply films one of the great­est actors of his gen­er­a­tion doing his thing. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, David Lynch – always a treat in front of the cam­era – puts in a strong shift as Howard, deliv­er­ing per­haps the most poignant tur­tle-relat­ed tale ever com­mit­ted to film. But this is undoubt­ed­ly Stanton’s show, a pow­er­ful love let­ter to an endur­ing screen icon.