A dull drama about gamblers generates little tension, writes Donald Clarke
GIVEN the rise in enthusiasm for poker over the past decade, it was inevitable that the game would eventually make its way into a mainstream Hollywood movie. Curtis Hanson, the reliably efficient director of LA Confidential and 8 Mile, seems a reasonable candidate to direct such a picture. Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana are people we like. You might, thus, feel inclined to go "all in" on Lucky You turning out a winner. Sadly, a glance at the flop reveals a fatally busted flush.
The main difficulty stems from managing the tension between those who know the game - people who understand the painfully strained poker references above - and those who, on hearing the word "flush", think first of lavatories.
Bana plays an untrustworthy gambler looking forward to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Some days before the event is to begin, he happens upon some token love interest in the form of the perennially engaging Ms Barrymore.
Though she provides Bana with a mouth to kiss and a handbag from which to steal, Barrymore is here principally to ask the technical questions that will trouble poker novices in the audience. After each hand is dealt, Bana painstakingly talks her (and us) through the various procedures and possibilities. One more heart and we have a flush. If any other player has an ace we're screwed. The card featuring the mischievous fellow waving a sword is called a jack. And so forth.
When, following an endless series of repetitive adventures involving squandered entrance fees, Bana finally makes it to the tournament, a television commentator continues the detailed annotations. Poker enthusiasts will be bored, while the uninitiated (or those who pay attention) will feel as if they have been dragged to a particularly uninteresting course of academic lectures.
None of which is to suggest that Lucky You would have worked if the poker had been allowed to speak for itself. The tediously hackneyed relationship between Bana and his gambler dad (Robert Duvall on autopilot) brings new meaning to the word perfunctory. Barrymore has little else to do bar nod studiously.
Worst of all, the picture totally fails to engage with the charged lunacy of Las Vegas or - despite featuring dozens of top players as themselves - the frenzied atmosphere of the World Series. For all the sense of place achieved, the picture might as well have been filmed on a wet day in Bundoran. DONALD CLARKE
