"Must be tough playing in the shadow of your father"
This is a great time to come out with a movie about poker, since the sport has taken off at supersonic speed with amateurs winning the main event of the World Series in the last few years and people following the action on ESPN. The main problem I see with this movie though is that in an effort to be original it runs into unreal situations like a misdeal followed by a huge bad beat, or a close call to end a contrived bet.
The plot is fairly typical, a poker pro, Huck Cleever, trying to make it to the World Series of poker and win the main event. In the process, he meets a girl that shakes his world and makes him rethink his priorities. The added complication is that he is the son of a two-time winner of the event, and the son-father relationship has been in tatters for a long time. During his quest, Huck experiences huge swings in his luck, and this provides an enlightening view of what the life of a professional gambler can be like.
The acting is not...
Short on romance, long on the intricacies of poker
"Lucky You" is a tutorial in professional poker. The strategy. The company. And, most importantly for any movie that chooses to invest in its subject - the nature of it. The screenplay - written by Eric Roth and director Curtis Hanson - charts the heartbeat of an addicted gambler, a pulse that mirrors that of a cocaine user: Joyous leaps and races punctuated by moments when the flow of blood almost stops completely.
It strips some of the manly sweat away from the craft, too. The movie lacks the histrionics and black drama of, say, "Rounders," in part because "Rounders" is a myth, born of the idea men have about the wars of personality going on at a poker table. "Lucky You" has its clashes, for sure, and its cliches, too, but they lack blarney and false bravado. Here, poker is risk management. Actuarial work. And it makes sense.
Eric Bana turns in a committed performance as Huck Cheever, a Las Vegas poker player - he dabbles in other ridiculous bets of chance,...
Flawed but Surprisingly Entertaining...
If you aren't a fan of high-stakes poker, or the gambling lifestyle, in general, Curtis Hanson's "Lucky You" may seem a 'bad bet', particularly as a romantic vehicle for Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore; but if you enjoy the rush of the game, and the Vegas lifestyle, circa 2003, this one is a keeper!
While the film lacks the intensity of "The Cincinnati Kid", "The Gambler", or "The Rounders", or loopy reality of "California Split", I'd still rank it among the better films about gambling, simply because of Hanson's non-apologetic approach to the subject, and respect for the practitioners (with many real-life gamblers appearing in the various match-ups). As the estranged son of a poker legend (Robert Duvall, who is, as always, superb), Eric Bana is quite convincing as a gifted, if headstrong gambler, for whom money, anyone's money, is simply a tool to ply his trade. He has a code of ethics, but ultimately, being in the game is the most important thing in his life, which puts him...
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