The Lucky Ones, directed by Neil Burger (The Illusionist), is the latest from a long line of movie “about” the Iraq war. As witnessed the last few years, those movies haven’t done so well at the box office and this small independent production certainly did not break the mold. Given the fact that it is an independent production, and it got the luminous Rachel McAdams and good old Shawshank State Prison escapee Tim Robbins, I took a chance and rented the DVD.

This is the story of three returning soldiers, Colee Dunn (Rachel McAdams), T.K. Poole (Michael Pena), and Fred Cheever (Fred Robbins) who end up taking a road trip across the United States after their flight home is canceled. Colee is a sweet, enthusiastic but very naive private who was wounded in the leg, and on her way to bring her dead boyfriend’s guitar back to his family. T.K, who was injured in his private parts, can’t come to terms on how to deal with his loss of manhood and his relationship with his fiancee waiting at home. Finally, Cheever finished his lengthy tour with an injured back and only wants to return home to see his wife and son but quickly learns that his wife wants to divorce him and his son needs $20K for college. Through a set of odd circumstances, the three find themselves in a series of mishaps and misadventures that reinforce the bond between them.

The Lucky Ones is one of those movies that you can’t help but like despite some troublesome flaws. The movie is light and fairly quickly paced and focuses on extensive character development as the trio travels across the United States. When they finally arrive to their destination, all their dreams and hopes are not exactly there but the movie shows the deep bond service members have for each others. The biggest problem with the movie was the amount of incongruous coincidences used as plot devices. I will name a few here: no flights going out of NYC for two weeks, a cheesy-looking tornado dropping out of nowhere and Cheaver’s wife asking for a divorce the moment he sets foot in his home.

Almost just as bad is that the movie intermittently suffers from an ill-defined tone. Comedy and drama are not always mixed well in the plot and so the viewer never really feels strongly either way, or worse, gets exasperated with the choices. For example, the scene where Colee weeps in the back of the car after an argument with T.K is made to be some kind of comical moment using a light musical score and a couple looks at T.K and Cheaver’s face. Problem is the scene was actually sad with Colee crying because she was alone on Earth with nowhere to go to. So indeed, you are actually feeling sad and you want the movie to dig deeper into that issue, but the script calls for light comedy during the scene. The movie felt a bit too contrived at times but that would be unfair to the performance from the likable cast.

The actors’ performances and chemistry are the main highlight of this little indie, keeping the underwritten script and contrived plot from sinking it. Interaction between the three main characters is easy and unforced, and more importantly, felt real and sincere. Burger did a solid job of developing each character equally. Good old Tim Robbins put up an earnest and collected effort as a retiring soldier in his 40′s who cannot afford his son’s college tuition, whose wife wants to divorce him, and who is facing the fact that he is going to be jobless soon. His main objective is to gamble all his money in Las Vegas in the hopes that he can somehow come up with his son’s Harvard tuition. Michael Pena was surprisingly captivating and held his own, transitioning well from the confident and cocky character he was at the beginning of the movie to a more thoughtful and sensible person by the end. Pena has shown the past few years he is a force to contend with as a character’s actor (Crash, Shooter, Lions for Lambs).

Tough yet vulnerable, Rachel McAdams steals every single scenes she is in, making us laugh at how quirky and naive her character is and even kicking some ass in a bar fight after some nasty civilians make fun of her injured leg. Colee is young and naive but not stupid: Inquisitive and good-hearted, she chatters on and on to hide a much deeper sense of sadness and loneliness. She also has a very short temper as shown when she instantly explodes and lashes out at T.K. when he insults her dead boyfriend. You know Colee had a rough and sad childhood, all of this without us ever being told. This is just brilliant acting from McAdams in one of the most criminally unseen performance of the decade [Edit: Knowing what we know now, I'm going to say it loud and clear. This performance was more Oscar-worthy than 90% of the nominated female performances of last decade. What a load of crock...]

In all, weakness in terms of tone, and overuse of artificial plot devices make this movie unmemorable. However, The Lucky Ones is a pleasant road-trip movie if only for the cast outstanding work. Michael Pena, Tim Robbins, and the luminous Rachel McAdams are a trio that I wouldn’t mind spending more time with.

B

Notes: Rated R for language and some sexual content, 115 minutes, a Lionsgate release.

Original Post Date: April 10, 2009