Lucky

Har­ry Dean Stan­ton, in his final screen role, plays the epony­mous Lucky, a cig­a­rette-smok­ing, cof­fee-drink­ing lon­er hap­pi­ly mak­ing his way through life. His dai­ly rou­tine 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 to over-com­pli­cate 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.

As an actor, John Car­roll Lynch has worked with Mar­tin Scors­ese and David Finch­er, but rather than attempt to ape these esteemed film­mak­ers, he has cre­at­ed a gen­tly-paced and refined fea­ture of his own style. Cru­cial­ly, he always keeps the focus on Lucky. There are no long, sweep­ing shots through the 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 swan­song from an endur­ing screen icon.