HEIST FIDELITY: ‘LUCKY’ charms with a fast-paced if familiar formula…
‘Lucky’ Armstrong and her beau Cary Masterson are celebrating in Vegas after pulling off a million-dollar heist. There’s a lot of partying and a lot of drinking before they are to flee the city forever. But when Lucky wakes up with a hangover the next morning, their deadline is long past and Cary is gone… along with the cash.
Now Lucky has to get out of Vegas as quick as possible… because she knows that both the police and the people that the money belonged to will be closing in and neither will be in a forgivable mood.
She manages to make a messy getaway, but now she’s got to work out her next move quickly… because to survive all her pursuers and find Cary, she’ll have to live up to her nickname more than just her troubled heritage…
Most stories have a series of ‘acts’, but with its flashback structure filling in the narrative gaps as we go and a don’t-stop-for-breath vibe in the ‘present’, there’s a relentless momentum to Lucky that keeps things continually moving, for better or worse. Based on Marissa Stapley’s 2021 novel of the same name, it’s adapted by Jonathan Tropper who also created the not dissimilar but more overtly R-rated cult hit Banshee which memorably ran on Cinemax between 2013 and 2016. There’s also an Ellmore Leonard-esque vibe to proceedings – the maelstrom surrounding morally compromised characters and the self-inflicted damage that follows in their wake. (On the production side, it’s also notable that Reese Witherspoon is an executive producer).
Luciana ‘Lucky’ Armstrong is the heroine of the story, but she’s a shifting mixture of bad judgement calls and swift-thinking escapes that add irony to her nickname. She’s a character who survives – like the story – by never staying still or comfortable too long, presuming that innate dangers lurk if you trust first impressions. Joy – and the script – allow us to like Lucky and root for her without ever fully sympathising with her situation, a feat made possible by populating the tale with more despicable male characters and women who have done wrong or been wronged (and the fact that the heist that technically kicks off the story is less an amazing feat and more a flashbacked footnote).
It’s an all-star cast and all of them having fun. Alongside Anya Taylor-Joy (who has long-since proven herself in diverse roles in the likes of The Queen’s Gambit, Furiosa and The Gorge) and we have Timothy Olyphant (as John Armstrong, her imprisoned father), Annette Benning as Priscilla Masterson (the mob-leader and de facto chief henchwoman of crime-lord Wayne Whittaker played by William Fichtner), TV veteran Clifton Collins Jr. is Harris Dutch, Priscilla’s enforcer and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (an actor with an impressive carer that has already seen her receive Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and two Primetime Emmy Awards) plays Agent Billie Rand, a driven FBI agent pursuing Lucky at all costs. Drew Starkey plays Lucky’s estranged partner, Cary Masterson, who just happens to be Priscilla’s son, complicating the story dynamic even further.
The pilot episode barrels along with earnest, so much so that you enjoy proceedings in the moment but there isn’t a sense of growing peril or dramatic escalation, just continuous scurrying between one drama and near-miss that leads us to another. The second episode (of seven) slows things down a jot and gives some context to the various supporting relationships , but it’s still Lucky in immediate peril from her pursuers and living up to her name. By now, if you’ve stumbled into this for a sedate story, you’re in the wrong zip-code.
In that sense it’s all style above content – the story is fine but not as original nor as risk-taking as it wants to be, but you’re here for that snarky star-power and colour-palette. Yes, the sense of disloyalty amongst thieves is a rich if somewhat familiar dramatic canvas, done better and worse elsewhere, but the performances are intense enough and the cinematography is moody – the backdrop of Vegas that opens proceedings is a neon canvas surrounded by a sun-bleached arid desert that both often reward film and television productions. Less of a rarity than it once was, it’s good to see a female-led story, at heart, Lucky screams no more or less than fast-paced guilty pleasure.
If your taste is for the likes of Banshee and Justified, then Lucky is another solid, decent but perhaps less boundary-pushing entry in that subversive anti-hero collective.
8/10
Lucky is streaming on the Apple platform, its first two episodes are available from the 15th July with weekly instalments through August…